Blood Magic
by SweetDeamon
Summary: After Remus is fatally wounded by Bellatrix, a desperate Tonks resorts to Dark Magic in order to save her husband's life. Together, she and Remus must suffer the consequences, which grow more dire than either of them could ever imagine... AU RLNT
1. Reality

_Note: Wow, a brand new shiny 'fic! Hello everybody, this is Blood Magic! I've decided to post this because we are nearing the end of The Dark Creature's Child...and because as per usual I was too impatient to wait! Don't panic – I will be updating all of my stories as soon as possible. I break up from University for Christmas in just a few days' time!_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**1: Reality**

There had never been a wider or more violent awakening to the realities of the world than that which Remus Lupin found himself faced with just two days after his wedding.

Indeed, he realised as he lay sprawled upon the ground in a steadily seeping pool of his own blood, it was entirely unfathomable how the past two days had been so wonderful, so hopeful, so optimistic...

How in Merlin's name he and his wife had lain in bed that very morning and spoken so whimsically about whether or not he would bother making her breakfast in bed ten years down the line was entirely beyond him. The whole thing had been downright foolish as a topic of conversation, and yet at the time it had seemed entirely reasonable.

Remus supposed getting married had a habit of doing that to a person, it could send you off into a fluffy and distorted version of reality where those silly romantic novels teenaged witches seemed so keen on seemed downright real and plausible.

It was bloody stupid, if truth be told.

Because here he was, a thousand worlds away from that morning, back to reality with a bump. Or, to be more precise, with a slashing curse to the chest that had thrown him to the ground with such force that he was sure he had managed to crack his head open in the process.

Yes, to hell with optimism and fairytale endings, because Remus Lupin knew better than that.

Or worse. He knew so much worse. He knew, newly wed or not, that there was a war on, that he might just be on the losing side, that all he held dear or even his very life itself could be snatched away from him in a heartbeat...

Except this wasn't a heartbeat. It was a slow and painful death. And as he watched his masked attacker advance upon him, wand trained triumphantly upon his chest, Remus supposed he couldn't possibly die in any other fashion because reality was just sick and twisted like that.

It very nearly made him laugh, or at least choke out a breath in amusement, which only made him realise that perhaps he wasn't back to reality quite yet because really there was absolutely nothing remotely amusing about this situation. Absolutely nothing at all.

In fairness to himself, disregarding the fact that there wasn't much sane or reasonable about attempting to be fair to oneself inside one's head, the world around him was bound to take on some sort of distorted or indeed surreal quality, what with the amount of blood that he seemed to be losing and the force of the blow to his head that had left stars dancing before his eyes.

Sweet Merlin, he was aching, throbbing, burning, such a dizzying wave of pain that it was consuming him. The world about him, a mass of spells streaking back and forth as a brutal struggle between Order members and Death Eaters raged, and indeed the Death Eater who was fast approaching his crumpled form, seemed somewhat far away, as if Remus were in some way disconnected from it all, as if he wasn't entirely there...

He was slipping away...

The Death Eater raised her wand, slowly, deliberately...

Bloody Bellatrix. It had to be bloody Bellatrix, taunting him like that...

And yet this realisation only made Remus want to laugh again, because really when had he started tagging _bloody_ onto the beginning of phrases in such abundance? Even if it was only inside his head...

Dora was rubbing off on him, clearly...

_Dora..._

She'd been the other side of the street, last he'd glimpsed. Merlin, he hoped she hadn't seen him fall, he hoped she didn't spot him lying here, bleeding all over the cobbles...

Dying.

Of course she was going to find out eventually. For one thing, honesty was good in a marriage and, more importantly, Remus suspected that dying wasn't the sort of thing that he could just...well..._cover up_...

It was at that moment that he realised that Bellatrix was raising her wand...

A bright flash of blue light came streaking overhead, and Remus' eyes widened in surprise as Bellatrix hesitated a moment too late, the spell striking her in the shoulder. The Death Eater stumbled, head snapping round towards the source of the spell, only for another spell to shoot forwards, and another, and another...

As he watched Bellatrix dodge a couple of curses, only to be caught in the arm by another, leaving her to stumble backwards into a wall, Remus felt a desperate desire to look round to catch a glimpse of his saviour, but he could do nothing but watch Bellatrix deflect a spell with a furious swipe of her wand, a deep slash upon her shoulder beginning to seep blood all over her black robes. With a furious shriek, the Death Eater took aim at the newest attacker and sent her own barrage of spells flying through the air. A few were deflected against a shielding charm, Remus watched them shoot back overhead, one striking the pavement beside him with a burst of dust, a second smashing through a nearby shop window with an almighty crash. A second later, the werewolf heard the distinct crackling sound of a magical shield shattering under sustained attack, and Bellatrix let out a triumphant cry, raising her wand once again...

At which point Remus felt sudden movement beside him, and a figure crashed face first onto the cobbles beside him. The werewolf caught a brief glimpse of a head of messy bubblegum pink hair before Bellatrix let loose a stunning spell...

Seemingly too dazed to dare to lift her head from the ground, Dora fumbled with her wand, wrenching her arm blindly upwards, with a choked yet fiercely determined shout of:

"PROTEGO!"

And with that, Bellatrix's spell rebounded off the hastily thrown up barrier, the movement far too abrupt for the Death Eater to respond, and Remus gasped in a downright gleeful breath to see the flash of red light strike Voldemort's first lieutenant square in the face, throwing her back against the wall with an audible crack.

And before he could shun his pain just long enough to enjoy the sight of his wife's estranged aunt crumpling to the ground like a rag doll, he felt a hand grasping hold of him by the wrist, followed by the sickening pull of apparation, the pain coursing through his chest and skull seemingly increasing tenfold.

And Remus simply couldn't help it. He cried out in agony, screwing his eyes firmly shut and willing himself to pass out...

When he came to, after an undeterminable length of time, he could feel an almost suffocating pressure upon his chest and a gruff voice from somewhere towards his feet observed grimly:

"He's a goner, lass. There's no doubt about it."

"Shut UP, Mad-Eye!" Dora's voice demanded furiously, the final few syllables cracked, nearing a sob. "Just...bloody shut up!" The pressure upon his chest seemed to increase and as he attempted to gasp air into his lungs, he heard his wife demand: "Stop bleeding, Remus...just...just stop bloody bleeding..."

"Blood's not going to clot after a curse like that, lass..."

"SHUT UP, MAD-EYE! Come on, Sweetheart...stop...stop bleeding...just...just stop..."

"Here, let go of that, you're suffocating him." Remus heard Moody instruct, voice suddenly unnaturally soft and caring. "Let him breathe in his last minutes, Tonks. It's the best you can do for him."

For a long moment, Dora paid her mentor not a blind bit of notice, and yet as Remus managed to prise his heavy eyelids open, the werewolf watched the grizzled old wizard lay a blurry hand upon the witch's shoulder.

"Come on, lass. Come on, that's it..."

And slowly, the pressure upon his chest began to ease and Dora straightened up with a deep, shuddered breath.

And as their eyes met, the pain and resignation seeping out into the air until the world seemed suddenly grey and bleak, Remus knew precisely what was coming.

He was going to die.

Dora gazed down at the broken and bleeding form of her husband of just two days, and after what seemed like an eternity she carefully wet her lips, her expression growing surprisingly fierce as she whispered:

"Leave us."

Moody slowly withdrew a heavy hand from the witch's shoulder, pausing to lean forward until he could meet Remus' eye.

Remus wondered what he might say, this great man who had seen so many people die this way. He wondered if there were any words, if after a while it was possible to know what to tell a man in his last moments...

But Moody merely reached forward to clamp a hand down upon the werewolf's arm, gnarled fingers gripping tightly for a moment, before he gave a firm nod and straightened up. And with that, he turned and walked away.

As Dora reached to take hold of his hand, Remus forced a gasp of air into his lungs, ready to speak, to say something, anything before it was too late...

"Shh." she breathed, reaching to stroke a unfathomably soothing hand down his cheek, seemingly oblivious to the blood that became smeared upon her fingertips. "It's alright, Sweetheart. It's going to be alright."

He wanted to tell her how brave she was, how utterly fearless, and how he loved her for it, how he loved her for everything...

And yet the words struggled to form upon his tongue. His vision swam as Dora leant down towards him, hot breath still ragged from the conflict tickling his face as she brushed a kiss to his cheek, hand sweeping the hair back from his eyes. He allowed his eyes to drift closed again as she felt her lean closer still, hands reaching to slide carefully around him, lips brushing his ear.

"Don't be frightened." she whispered as he allowed his himself to slump sideways against her, and as he breathed in the gloriously familiar scent of coconut shampoo mixed with the flowery perfume he'd bought her the previous Christmas he managed to raise a heavy, lead-like arm until he to tangle a hand in her hair.

"Nor you..." he insisted, the words little more than a sharply exhaled breath. "Stay strong without me...don't...don't let them win..."

As he trailed off, breath entirely spent, her grip upon him tightened, and as he sluggishly dragged his eyes open again she drew back a little to regard him, dark eyes unnaturally steely. And then she told him:

"I won't be without you, Remus. I simply won't. You can't die."

Her refusal to accept the inevitable was utterly crushing. Remus wanted to shake his head, wanted to plead with her not to say such a thing because he simply couldn't bear it. He'd promised himself just two days previously that he would never disappoint her, never let her down, and yet here he was doing precisely that.

Because love might have been the most powerful of all magics, but Remus was sure that this time it was simply too late...

No matter what he had promised, he couldn't stop death...

Dora drew in a deep breath, before turning to look searchingly over her shoulder. Remus strained to see what she was looking at, and could just about making out the blurry figure of Mad-Eye Moody stood a short distance off, keeping a careful eye on their surroundings. Dora stared over at him for a long moment, lips pursing together in thought, before she turned back to gaze down at her husband again, expression once again steely. She reached to slide her arms around him, beginning to ease him up from the ground, causing the werewolf to wince. The sudden movement made his head spin and he felt instantly faint.

"Dora..." he wheezed, face contorting at the wave of nausea that swept over him. "What..."

"Shh." the witch hissed, pausing to glance over her shoulder again, and when she looked back at him again her gaze upon him was fiercely determined.

"You're not going to die, Sweetheart." she whispered, pulling him up into a sitting position until his head lolled forward, chin coming to rest upon her shoulder.

As he struggled against the blackness that was threatening to descend upon his vision, Remus caught sight of Moody turning abruptly to face them.

"Tonks?" the old Auror barked as he began to stomp his way hurriedly back towards them. "What are you doing?"

As he felt Dora adjust her grip around his middle, Remus couldn't help but feel that this was a good question, and as the blackness began to descend he felt the familiar brush of her lips against his ear as she whispered:

"You're not going to die, because I won't let you."

And with that, pain erupted through his chest and he instantly faded into darkness as he once again felt the sudden pull of apparation.

As husband and wife disappeared with a loud crack, Moody's shout of protest echoed around the empty clearing, falling entirely on deaf ears.


	2. Digging Up The Past

_Note: **CHARACTER DEATH!** Consider yourselves well and truly warned!_

_Since I first came up with the idea for this story it has altered substantially! In light of this I have altered the genre from Angst/Romance to Angst/Tragedy. Thanks to Trixie for helping me to feed the plot bunnies, even if I've utterly failed at studying thanks to their constant hopping around my head!_

_This story is AU! Moody has survived the War...as has somebody else, but if I say who that is it will possibly make the following chapter far less interesting to read! But you'll have figured out who is alive and who isn't by the end of this chapter! We will be jumping back and forward in time an awful lot..._

_You'll probably have at least a million questions about what on earth is going on by the time you finish reading this. But...well...that's all part of my evil plan..._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**2: Digging Up The Past**

It had been many long years since that fateful night, since the thrashing rain had hammered relentlessly against the windows of the house, since the cries of pain had sent shudders through his old bones and the silence that had dragged on forever after had left him to feel dead inside.

He'd never held a baby before then, and his gnarled hands had trembled to wrap the squirming yet silent newborn infant up in a towel, staring at the helpless little bundle of pink skin because he hadn't dared look up at the deathly pale figure lying upon the bed, still and unresponsive.

Dead.

"You've a son." he'd murmured to the child's father, who was lying upon the bed, face buried in his wife's hair as he cradled the still figure tightly to him, so grief-stricken at his loss that he seemed utterly lost to the world around him, great sobs choking him more and more with every gasped breath.

"I said you've a son." he'd said a little more clearly, at last forcing himself to look up at the scene before him, and to see it at last the heart so few people seemed to believe he had shrivelled in his chest.

Because it had hit him, then. Truly hit him.

She was gone. Lost to them all forever. And this squirming little parasite, wrapped up in a bloodied towel, was all that was left of her in the world...

He had been watching the boy grow ever since. He'd often wondered how such a child would cope in the world, surrounded by such resentment, motherless with an absent father too broken and guilty to bear so much as a glance his way. It had been that way from that first evening.

_Take it away_, the father had insisted, unable to allow himself so much as a glimpse of his offspring. _Take it away, I can't. I can't stand it._

The child had been deposited with his grandmother, who was no doubt in little fit state to care for him either, and yet she had muddled along best she could manage for some fifteen years until she had died just a week ago. Since then the now teenaged boy had been staying with his godfather for the Christmas holidays.

Despite the close bond he had shared with the boy's late mother, he saw the child very rarely. He had happened across him years previously when the child had been just five years old, sat upon a chair in the corner of the room at a party at the Potters' house, openly staring.

"Are you scared of me, lad?" he'd asked gruffly, and the boy had looked him straight in the eyes and shook his head firmly.

"No, your mother never was, either." he'd grunted as the boy had continued to stare in silence. "Perhaps that was half the trouble."

He'd not meant to say that, really. Nobody said anything about the boy's mother anymore. Nobody talked about what had happened in the months leading up to the boy's birth, about the fateful battle that had started it all, about the tragic nature of love and the destruction it had been destined to cause. Nobody spoke of why the child's mother had died, why his father was destined to be so distant, why his grandmother struggled to look him square in the eye each morning...

Somebody was going to have to talk about it eventually, though. He'd known that from the beginning.

He just hadn't expected that person to be him.

No indeed, Alastor Moody had never expected to find fifteen year old Teddy Remus Lupin stood upon his doorstep one frosty December morning, determined to know what had happened to his parents all those years ago.

Moody rarely entertained visitors. He was, by now, growing old and distinctly frail and he rarely bothered to leave the magically protected little fortress that was his semi-detached house in a suburb in Surrey. He spent the vast majority of his time sitting before the fire in his living room, keeping an eye upon the countless foe glasses he kept dotted around the room, grunting disapprovingly at the latest issue of the Daily Prophet and writing bad-tempered letters of complaint to the Auror Department and over Ministry offices about their numerous and damning inadequacies. He was, and always had been, distinctly pessimistic about this great new society that was being built after Voldemort's downfall and the older he got the more withdrawn from the outside world he was content with being.

When he had heard the knocking upon his front door he had been at first irritated and then bemused that anybody should care to pay him a visit. He had advanced stiffly out into the hallway, wand drawn ready in anticipation of attack, only to spot the fifteen year old boy with mousy brown hair stood upon the doorstep through the solid wooden door with his magical eye. For a long while he had stood, staring at his visitor through the wood, watching Teddy rock a little nervously back and forward upon his heels as he waited for the door to open.

"Who's there?" the grizzled old Auror had called at last, just in case, and Teddy had leant forward until his mouth was practically pressed to the letterbox, calling back:

"It's Teddy, Mr Moody. Teddy Lupin...? Would it be alright if I came in?"

He had better manners than those his mother had practiced, Moody noted.

_It's me, you paranoid old git_, she'd bellow impatiently through the letterbox at him should she ever have come to see him. _You know it's me, you can see me through the door! Open up!_

In reality he'd always known it was her because nobody else had ever had the cheek to be so bloody rude to him.

He'd been so terribly fond of her rudeness that the thought made him sigh despairingly at having lost her so early, of having to see her die so young.

He took a moment to compose himself. And then another, just in case. Then he set about unlocking the door and when he pulled it open to reveal Teddy stood behind it he felt the shock of it strike him all over again.

Teddy had grown to be tall for a boy of fifteen. Had Nymphadora been alive he would no doubt have surpassed her in height already. She'd always been short, a strangely dainty little figure. Instead of morphing herself a sturdier build she distorted the look with clumpy boots and baggy jeans that made her seemingly shrink more than ever.

Teddy appeared to have inherited his mother's love of ill-fitted trousers, for his own looked to be at least a size too big, though the boy had reached to shove his hands deeply into his pockets apprehensively which did not seem to do the garment much good at all.

Merlin, the number of times he'd seen Remus stood, hands in his pockets like that...

Strange, Moody thought, that such a habit had been passed on without either father or son knowing it.

He took a moment to look the boy up and down a few times, noting all the little familiar traits that made him want to flinch, all the alien ones that made this lad a person of his own, before giving a grunt and stepping aside.

"Come in then." he said, wondering vaguely how long it had been since he'd last seen the boy. As Teddy shuffled gratefully across the threshold, pausing to wipe his damp shoes upon the doormat, Moody estimated that it had been at least four years.

"How did you get here?" he asked, turning to stomp his way slowly back into the sitting room, not bothering to invite Teddy to follow him. After a brief pause the boy did just that. "Potter bring you?"

"It was Ginny."

"Hmph." Moody paused to glance around the sitting room thoughtfully before deciding: "Sit down. Don't touch anything, d'you hear?! I'll get us a cup of tea."

Teddy went to sit stiffly in a chair, hands folded carefully in his lap, and as he went to rummage around the kitchen in search of the kettle, Moody thought to call:

"I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother. Decent witch, knew her stuff she did. Very decent."

Teddy didn't reply. A glance back into the sitting room found the young wizard's gaze had fallen forlornly to his lap.

"Suffer much, did she?" Moody asked as he went back to making tea. Again, Teddy didn't respond. Once he had set the kettle to boil and had retrieved the teapot, Moody turned again to peer into the room at the boy, frowning deeply. "Don't suppose you're here to talk about her though, are you?" he observed knowingly, failing not to sound disgruntled. "Well if it's your father you're after there's not much use asking me!"

He didn't want this. Didn't want to answer questions, didn't want to dig up the past. Teddy had barely uttered a word yet, and Moody was already regretting opening the door.

"Do you know where he is?" Teddy asked, turning to peer into the kitchen hopefully. "Do you know where my dad went, after the War?"

Moody gave a vague grunt and busied himself with a couple of teabags.

"He could be dead for all I know, lad." he admitted, frowning deeply. "I wouldn't be surprised...the state of the man! I certainly haven't seen him. Sugar?"

Teddy seemed lost in thought for a long moment, his shoulders slumped dejectedly before he managed to shake his head.

As he finished making tea, Moody found himself feeling rather regretful for being so blunt.

Merlin, what a mess...

"You know lad," he told the mournful child a few minutes later once he had handed over a cup and saucer and set himself down in a chair with a cup himself, "I'd not ponder on your father being gone if I were you. Won't do you any good, mark my words! It was all such an ugly business, you wan't nothing to do with it! Your father knew it, that's half the reason he never came to claim you from your grandmother."

"What's the other half?" Teddy asked, setting his tea down upon the coffee table, apparently not keen to drink it.

Moody let out a wary half-sigh, shifting uneasily in his chair.

"Who am I to tell you that?" he said, shaking his head at the very thought. "If your grandmother never saw fit to tell you what happened..."

"She said I was too young to understand. But I'm not young anymore, I...I think I'm old enough to know the truth!" Teddy's voice had grown surprisingly fiery, and for a moment Moody was glad to see the boy had grown to have fire in his belly like Nymphadora always had. But then the old wizard let out a huff and scowled into his teacup.

"What happened to your mother and father was a dark and dreadful thing." he'd recalled gruffly, failing not to raise his voice, but the boy didn't flinch.

"Harry says you know everything there is to know about dark and dreadful things." Teddy recalled, leaning forward a little in his chair, the crackling fire lighting up his pale face in a burst of flickering orange. "And you were there, weren't you? You were there when I was born, you were there when Mum died and Dad crumbled and you...you handed me over to Gran..."

"It's not my place to tell you!"

"...and you know what happened before, don't you? You know about Dad and Bellatrix. You were there...Grandma Molly says you took Mum in, kept her safe..." Teddy was cut off abruptly when Moody reached to slam his cup and saucer down onto the coffee table with such force that there came the sound of splintering china, the saucer crumbling to pieces, tea sloshing onto the woodwork as the retired Auror snapped:

"I want you to leave!"

"No!" Teddy retorted, shuffling further back in his seat and folding his arms firmly across his chest. "They're my parents! I have to know what happened to them! You have to tell me, nobody else knows as much as you do!"

Despite his anger, Moody was impressed. He'd shouted at fully fledged Aurors and Ministry officials and had them leave rooms at a run. And yet the child sat before him clearly had no intention of budging...

"Your mother was as stubborn as an ox too." he grunted, reaching to snatch up his wand and clear away the mess with a swipe. "That's what bloody killed her! Stupid, foolish girl! Stupid and foolish and downright _brilliant_!"

Teddy swallowed a lump in his throat.

Moody sighed heavily as he set his wand back down upon the arm of his chair, shaking his head despairingly at the memory.

"I could shout at her until I was blue in the face." he recalled, gazing wearily into the fire. "I did! I did, that day when I found out what she'd done. I shouted until I was hoarse, but she didn't care, she didn't regret what she'd done, not for a second. Merlin, I can remember it like it was yesterday, lad. I swore I'd never forgive her for it! And I haven't! I never will! What a mess! What a bloody awful mess!"

"What happened?" Teddy asked, and as his gaze drifted up to the faded photograph balanced precariously upon the mantlepiece beside the carriage clock, Moody scowled accusingly at the smiling figure of newly qualified Auror Nymphadora Tonks stood beside his younger self in the Ministry's Atrium, silently cursing that blasted girl wherever death had taken her.

Because he knew he was going to have to relive it all and tell her son the truth.

"I knew she'd been up to something unthinkable," he began, staring at the photograph. "She was desperate, for one thing. Desperation makes us do foolish things, lad. And then of course when I arrived at the Burrow that afternoon to regroup with the rest of the Order I saw that shifty look on her face. And then I saw your father. _Not dead_. And I knew right there and then that Nymphadora had done something unforgivably bad..."


	3. The Unthinkable

_Note: Thanks very much to my kind reviewers! :-)_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**3: The Unthinkable**

Stomping his way up the track towards the door of the Burrow, Alastor Moody found Kingsley Shacklebolt stood guard by the door, watching his approach.

"You're the last one back, Alastor!" the tall Auror called as he raised an arm to point his wand directly at his fellow Order member's chest. Picking a security question at random, he asked: "What did Tonks buy you for Christmas last year?"

Moody scowled. His mood was poor enough without Shacklebolt picking ridiculous questions such as that.

"A single sock for my remaining good foot!" he snapped as he reached the door, coming to a stomping halt. "Where is she?! Let me see her! Poor, stupid lass, when did she get here?! I've been searching all over!"

"She and Remus arrived five minutes ago." Kingsley informed him, sounding vaguely bemused by his tone, prompting him to assure Moody: "They're both fine. Well...not entirely, Remus is a bit on the ragged side but he'll be up and about in time for tea..."

"In time for tea?!" Moody barked, pace quickening to hear such nonsense. "Are you out of your mind?! I saw him, he was as good as dead!"

"Hardly, Alastor..." Kingsley murmured, only for Moody to turn swiftly around to glower at him.

"If I say he was dying, he was bloody well dying!" he growled. "Bellatrix got him square in the chest! Blood everywhere! Didn't stand a bloody chance, Merlin help him! Had Tonks in utter hysterics! I left them to be alone, he was slipping away right there in front of her! Next thing I know she's bloody apparated them away to Merlin knows where!"

"But Remus is fine," Kingsley insisted as Molly Weasley appeared in the sitting room hallway, looking flustered at the sudden commotion. "See for yourself, he's right in there..."

Molly hastily backed away from the doorway as Moody strode into the room, where he found himself face to face with Remus lying upon the sofa, blankets tucked neatly around him, his head propped up with a mound of cushion. Tonks was stood upon the faded rug before the sofa, and at her mentor's non-too quiet entrance she looked up from her inspection of her husband to glance at the newcomer.

Then she promptly looked at her shoes.

Moody felt a dreadful sense of foreboding as he made a beeline for the sofa, reaching to jab a non-too gentle finger at the werewolf's neck in search of a pulse he knew full well should not be there...

And yet there it was, drumming unfathomably strong against his fingertip...

Remus stirred.

And Moody felt such dread at this most unnatural of movements that fury engulfed him like roaring emerald flames in a fireplace.

Molly let out an audible gasp as the grizzled old Auror rounded on the young witch stood beside him, reaching to grab hold of her by the shoulder, giving her a furious shove backwards until he had her pinned against the wall, his rage leaving him to spit out his words in an uneven, furious stream:

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

Tonks simply stared blankly at him.

"THAT'S ENTIRELY UNNATURAL!" he bellowed, giving her a furious shake in an attempt to jolt some sort of life into her. "HE WAS AS GOOD AS DEAD! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

"I did what was necessary." she informed him calmly, expression growing shamelessly void of remorse for her actions, and Kingsley called:

"For Merlin's sake, Alastor! Let go of her, she's had a difficult day as it is!"

"Stupid girl!" Moody exclaimed, normal eye bulging, not backing off in the slightest. "There was no saving him, I told you as much! What did you do to him?! It's against bloody nature, whatever it is! It's wrong! It's..." he paused abruptly, a horrible notion striking the words clear from his tongue and before she could duck under his arm or pull herself free he reached to grab hold of her by the wrist, making her flinch.

"Alastor!" Kingsley protested again, and Moody might very well have snapped at the bloody moron to shut up had he not been so focused on dismissing the notion, of banishing the dreadful idea from his head. Because it wasn't right. He couldn't be. Tonks wasn't that stupid, she wouldn't have...she just wouldn't...

She'd been bloody fascinated from the moment he'd told her about it years previously.

"Stop faffing around with that bloody paperwork and get your cloak!" he'd barked that morning when he had appeared unannounced at the entrance to her cubicle in the Auror office some month after she had first qualified, and as he had given the shambolic mass of papers sprawled all over the place a filthy look, she'd half-jumped to her feet and asked:

"Where are we going?"

"Dark, dark business." he'd growled, and she'd sniggered at his tone and asked him:

"Light my wand then, shall I?"

He had refused to grace this ridiculous comment with an answer. Instead he'd grunted irritably when, in the process of swinging cloak about her shoulders she had managed to upset a pot of quills all over the floor, and said:

"Tell me everything you know about _blood magic_!"

And she'd grinned and said:

"Blood magic? Never heard of it!"

"There's a chapter on it in the book I lent you last month." he'd pointed out irritably, turning to lead the way towards the door.

"Which one? You've lent me at least a dozen different books in the past week alone!"

"And I don't suppose you've read a bloody word out of any of them!"

"Well no, of course I haven't..."

Sometimes, he could just bloody well hex the girl!

"It's one of the most unnatural magics known to wizardkind, Nymphadora! You'd do well to know about it!"

"I'd invite you to enlighten me, but I'm sure you were already going t..."

"Commonly practiced by hags on the children they capture to eat." he set about summarizing sharply as he led the way up the dark marble corridor towards the lift. "Through an exchange of blood a ritual enables the life of one person to be bestowed upon another by means of a curse being placed upon the two participants. Couple of slashes upon the forearm and Merlin knows what else and then physical contact between the two will essentially sap the life from one and gift it to the other..."

"So if somebody were to be dying...?"

"Another could weaken himself, shave a few years off his own life to heal wounds, that sort of thing...hold hands long enough and the recipient would suck the life out of the partner entirely, they'd drop dead as a stone."

"Wow..."

"Wow?! How'd you think hags live so bloody long?! Suck the life out of the children who have long lives ahead of them and gobble up the corpse! There's no wow about it, Nymphadora, it's the foulest and most unnatural of magics!"

And Tonks had sucked in a deep breath and, almost awed, agreed:

"Sounds like it."

The memory of her fascination twisting his stomach into knots as his heart began to pound apprehensively in his chest, he reached to grab hold of the sleeve of her robes, yanking it up towards her elbow to reveal her forearm...

At the sight of the fresh, ugly red slash across her pale skin his blood ran cold.

Oh Merlin...

He'd been so sure, so convinced...

She wouldn't. Nymphadora just wouldn't, she simply couldn't have, she knew better...

And yet there was the evidence staring his straight in the face, searing his eyes with such horror, almost as if it were a Dark Mark he had discovered emblazoned upon her arm...

"How could you?!" he hissed, dragging his gaze up from the grizzly sight to stare at her face instead. "How in Merlin's name could you even consider doing such a thing?!"

The temperature in the room seemed to have dropped suddenly, and he watched Tonks slowly wet her lips, gaze darting briefly sideways to where Remus lay upon the sofa, his chest rising and falling steadily as he slept.

"He...I...I was going to lose him! He was going to die!"

"Dying is a necessary part of life! We're all going to die, Nymphadora! It's not for us to...to meddle! To disrupt the natural way of things!"

"I know that..."

"Do you?! Well why isn't he bloody dead, then?!"

"We've been married a matter of days, Mad-Eye! I just...I just wanted...I couldn't just sit there..."

"And what kind of bloody marriage d'you have now, eh?! Share as much as a peck on the cheek and he'll harm you! He's as good as a bloody Dementor! What kind of bloody torture d'you want to bestow upon him?! A life he has thanks to the weakening of your own! A wife he can do nothing but watch! A wife he can't touch for fear of cutting her life short yet again! How long are you to live after saving him, hm?! Will you live to see sixty like the rest of us?! I bloody doubt it! He'll not forgive you for it, Nymphadora! He was better off dead!"

"Nobody's better off dead, Mad-Eye." she retorted, at last yanking herself free from him and pushing her way back towards the sofa. "The War's killed enough of us already without me sitting back and letting Bellatrix add to the list!"

"Consorting with bloody hags and lowlifes like that!" he barked, voice growing steadily louder as she went to perch carefully upon the edge of the sofa at Remus' side. "Who was it?! Where did you bloody find her?! How much have you paid the stinking creature to ruin your life?!"

"Shut up!" Tonks snapped, looking up from staring determinedly down at Remus to offer the old wizard a scowl. "It's none of your bloody business..."

"It's Azkaban's bloody business!" he retorted furiously as in the doorway Molly had slumped sideways against the doorframe, gripping hold of it as if she might sink to the floor, Kingsley just behind her staring bleakly at his boots. "You can kiss your bloody career behind, your life, even! That's a bloody life sentence you've got hanging over your head, lass! If this War ever ends and the Dementors ever return to Azkaban I'd not be surprised if they handed you straight over to them!"

"But the War isn't over! It's only getting worse, Merlin knows what the Ministry would do to me anyway! To any of us!"

"They'll lock you up, mark my words! Partaking in blood magic! For shame, Nymphadora!"

Tonks gave a defiant sniff, reaching to swipe a furious sleeve across her eyes.

"And you'll throw away the key, will you?!" she hissed, reaching to grasp hold of Remus by the hand, the action making Moody flinch at the very thought of it, at such a simple gesture sapping precious life from her, inch by leaching inch of skin. "Am I really that shameful?!"

"Don't bloody touch him!" he snapped, making to reach for her arm to pull her away, but she only gripped hold of the werewolf's hand even tighter, without so much as a flinch.

At the pressure upon his hand, Remus stirred again, and Moody watched despairingly as his eyes fluttered drowsily open, drawing in a deep, rather startled breath.

"It's alright, Remus." Tonks murmured, and Moody watched her release his hand. As she pulled it carefully free the grizzled old Auror flinched again at the sight of her red, wrinkled palm, the angry tone slowly dulling and the wrinkles fading away, sinking into her skin...

For a moment Moody felt relief, only for the witch to reach to press her hand to the werewolf's cheek instead as she told him: "We're at The Burrow."

"I don't understand..." Remus murmured, brow furrowing in confusion. "I...I was...what..."

"You're safe, Sweetheart. We all are."

"What happened?"

"It doesn't matter now, you just rest, alright?"

Remus appeared much too drowsy to argue or ask more questions, for he allowed his eyes to drift closed again, head lolling against her palm with a sigh, before he observed:

"You're so warm, Dora..."

And Moody despaired to watch the young witch swallow a lump in her throat, before drawing in a shuddering breath to whisper:

"I...I know..."

"Like you're burning..." Remus mumbled vaguely, and Moody glanced over at the doorway to hear an odd little squeak as Molly Weasley clamped her hand over her mouth, dissolving into tears.

"I know, Sweetheart." Tonks whispered, dabbing at her eyes with a sleeve again. "I know...it's alright. You just go to sleep..."

"She didn't tell him what had happened straight away." Moody told Teddy, sighing heavily and shaking his head. "They went on for days...I kept urging her to tell him the truth, but she couldn't bear to. And we didn't blame her, lad. We didn't blame her for it, not one bit. Because it was ugly business. Such a difficult thing... and it was painful to watch him when she told him the truth. I was there that day he came shooting down the stairs in his dressing gown, all flustered to tell us something was wrong with her...what a way to discover the truth! He hated himself from that moment on, hated himself with a passion..."


	4. Severed Ties

_Note: Thanks very much to everybody who has kindly left a review for this story! It's nice to know people are enjoying it, no matter how angsty and tragic the whole thing is! Blame the mega-angst on Trixie. I do..._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**4: Severed Ties**

As he strode purposefully up the street, wand in hand and eyes darting searchingly around their surroundings in search of trouble, her chosen attire did not escape his notice.

"Gloves in July, lass?" he grunted, and as she shot the dimly lit street lamp they were passing an impressively suspicious look, she merely murmured:

"Mm."

"New, are they?"

She shot him a scowl, before turning abruptly off the pavement and up a garden path, observing:

"Here we are, then."

As he turned to cast his eyes around the deserted street once more, Alastor Moody felt compelled to wonder:

"What are you going to tell them, Nymphadora? The parents who brought you into this world and thought they raised you decent?"

"It's not indecent to love whole-heartedly, Mad-Eye!" Tonks snapped, offering him another scowl over her shoulder as she reached the doorstep, reaching to give the brass door knocker a sharp couple of taps. "Just because you're incapable of such a thing, doesn't make it wrong!"

"If you loved him whole-heartedly you'd have let him die!" Moody retorted, stomping up the pathway after her. "In all my years, Nymphadora, I've never heard of anything more disgracefully _selfish_..."

"Shut u...!" her furious response was cut short by her mother calling warily through the door, and she sobered, cheerfully calling: "It's me, Mum! Me and Mad-Eye."

Mother and daughter took a moment to ask and respond to security questions, before the former set about unlocking the door.

"Not a word to them, Mad-Eye, I mean it!" Tonks hissed, reaching to tug the gloves more firmly onto her hands. "Not so much as a hint!"

"Course not, lass." he muttered, glancing over his shoulder to look around again. "Thought I'd at least wait until you bother to tell your bloody husband first!"

"Oh, shut up!" she snapped again, forgetting to whisper. "I've had enough of you going on at me, I really have!"

"Going on about what, dear?" Andromeda Tonks wondered as she pulled the door open, and her daughter let out a bad-tempered huff and exclaimed:

"What _doesn't_ he go on at me about?! Take your pick, Mum! Anything! Anything at all..." As her mother stepped aside to let the two visitors in, Tonks paused just inside the door to allow Andromeda to reach to throw her arms around her, hugging her tightly.

"For Merlin's sake, Nymphadora!" the older witch exclaimed, as Moody stepped inside, ushering the pair further into the hallway with grim mutterings about being exposed to Merlin knew what with the door left open. "Not a single visit all week! Not so much as an owl!"

"Well I'm here now."

"Your father's told you over and over! A single line...a single word, even! It's not difficult..."

"I'm fine, Mum."

"Then let us know, for goodness sake! What're those? Honestly, Nymphadora! Gloves in the middle of July..."

"Mum for Merlin's sake..."

"Ah, leave her, 'Dromeda." Ted Tonks reasoned as he appeared in the kitchen doorway, reaching to pocket his wand. "Give the poor girl a moment to breathe!"

As Moody set about mumbling a long series of incantations to lock the door firmly shut behind them, Tonks managed to pull herself free from her mother so that she could go to throw her arms around her father instead.

"Hi Dad!"

"Alright, Sweetheart?" Ted murmured, hugging her tightly, and then Moody heard him mutter: "You're mother's not wrong, you know. You've had us worried."

"I always have you worried."

"Well then, stop tormenting us and send us an owl, eh?" As he released his daughter and folded his arms across his chest, Ted wondered: "And how's Remus?"

"Your son-in-law's doing the rounds with Arthur Weasley this evening." Moody informed them, and Tonks hurriedly announced:

"He's fine, thanks Dad." She glanced purposefully at her mother as she insisted: "_We're_ fine. We're very happy."

"I didn't say a word." Andromeda pointed out cooly, and Ted cleared his throat loudly and insisted:

"Well then! Who would like a cup of tea? Come and help me, Dora..."

"I don't know why she insists on being like this." Andromeda informed Moody once Tonks had disappeared with her father into the kitchen. "I might've only met him a handful of times, but I love Remus dearly, I truly do...it's just...you know..."

"Can't say I do." Moody grunted as she led the way into the sitting room, though he was sure he had a fair idea.

Andromeda sat down stiffly in a chair, before sighing heavily, her eyes drifting closed.

"I hate him." she admitted after a very long pause. "He's wonderful and kind and caring and he does his very best for my daughter, I know he does. And I hate him for it."

As he eyed the various family portraits and snapshots that had been framed and dotted around the room, Moody wondered just how much more Andromeda would hate Remus when Tonks finally confessed the truth.

Probably an awful lot more. And then an awful lot less. Because Moody couldn't see Remus hanging around long once he knew the truth, he was much too sensible and caring to make Tonks suffer, even if she wasn't sensible enough herself. Moody could spot a divorce coming from miles off, or at least a permanent separation of a less formal nature, and Andromeda would probably be thrilled. She'd probably owl Remus and thank him for it.

Merlin, he mused as he consented to taking a seat upon the sofa. What a mess!

Why couldn't Tonks have simply let Remus die? It would have been far less painful than any of this. Being ripped apart by death was simple, definite, uncomplicated. Having Remus attempt to prise himself away was going to be downright bloody awful. Because Tonks was going to argue with him, she wouldn't let him go without a fight. She wouldn't stop fighting, either. She never did, she was just too bloody stubborn, this entire mess was evidence of that already.

It was at times like this that Moody was glad that he had never fallen in love. And yet...

He envied them. People like Nymphadora and Remus and others. People who were in love. Because it afforded them a protection like no other. It gave them a reason to fight back, a reason to survive and see the next day, an impenetrable sense of hope...

It had brought Voldemort ruin, all those years ago in Godric's Hollow.

And more recently it had damn near raised the dead, for Merlin's sake!

Moody both marvelled and despaired at the very thought.

He cleared his throat in a distinctly business-like fashion, banishing his increasing worry of the situation into a deep and secluded corner of his mind and concentrated on more pressing matters.

"We're here to discuss the plans for moving Potter next week." he announced, and Andromeda pursed her lips firmly together, hands clasped together in her lap.

"Oh, I see..."

"Lupin, Shacklebolt and I have drawn up a list of suitable enchantments and wards to be placed over the house for protection. The three of us will be visiting each safe house on Monday to set up the defences and double check them. We'll be doing a final check on Tuesday. You can expect us at any time after ten o'clock in the evening on both days. Best to do these things under the cover of darkness..."

He reeled off information until the conversation resembled more of a monologue than a discussion until Tonks came to perch next to him upon the sofa and Ted came in with the tea, a trio of steaming cups upon saucers that he set down upon the coffee table.

"I told him you wouldn't want one." Tonks explained, rolling her eyes a little at him as she reached to retrieve her cup.

"Oh Nymphadora!" her mother scolded as she too picked up a mug. "Take off those gloves first for goodness sake, you'll drop my best china!"

"You didn't need to get out the best china, you know." Tonks said, ignoring this request entirely though true to her mother's word the cup slid haphazardly about her fingers, threatening to slop tea into her lap. "It's only me, after all."

"I'm beginning to wish we hadn't!" Andromeda retorted, and with a sigh Tonks returned the cup to the table before folding her gloved hands carefully in her lap.

"Hiding something, are you?" Moody grunted as the young witch shifted rather awkwardly in her seat, though she shot him a raised eyebrow and insisted:

"Of course not."  
>"Then take off the gloves and drink the tea." he challenged.<p>

The look she shot him was utterly poisonous. But with all three sets of eyes all staring at her she gave her head a toss and, pausing just a little, reached to carefully slide her hands free from their woollen covers.

The first glove revealed nothing much of note. And yet the second...

Of course he'd been expecting it. The angry red skin, the wasted, boney fingers, swollen joints that aged them beyond measure...

And yet the sight made his mouth grow dry.

Her right hand looked somewhat unblemished save for her palm, the scorched red beginning to fade, and yet her left hand was in such a dreadful state that Moody wondered if it would ever recover at all.

"I had a bit of an accident." she lied to her mother a moment later, once Andromeda had made all the normal exclamations of a mother whose daughter was as accident prone and downright stupid as Nymphadora was. "I upset a saucepan of water off the stove this morning."

"Come here and let me see it!" Andromeda suggested, putting down her tea and rising to her feet. "You know what you want for burns like that, don't you? I've got a tub of cream in the cupboard, works wonders..."

Moody marvelled at the lack of downright shock, but supposed that after over two decades of their daughter's self destructive tenancies Ted and Andromeda were no doubt difficult to surprise.

It probably wasn't impossible. He'd bet his magical eye that Nymphadora's latest disregard for her own wellbeing would shock them to the core, because they, like him, would be sure their darling daughter knew better.

"Remus and I went for a walk earlier." she'd confessed some half an hour later when they had left her parents' house to meet back at The Burrow. "Just the two of us, you know, because oddly we don't seem to find much time to be together anymore."

She sounded accusing. She probably knew he'd been splitting them up and keeping them apart as much as possible for the past week.

Moody didn't care.

"Hand in hand, were you?" he'd grunted disapprovingly, and he scowled when she'd put a gloved hand to her mouth with an exaggerated exclamation of:

"How did you guess?!"

"You'd better hurry up and tell him the truth!" Moody snapped as they reached the Burrow's back door. "He's not stupid, you can't fool him for much longer!"

He'd meant much longer as in a matter of days, not a matter of hours. Which was why even he felt somewhat surprised at what happened next.

By the time they had met up with Remus and Kingsley at the Burrow to assure one another that each safe house had been visited and every helper knew the plan for the upcoming week, it had grown terribly late into the night. Molly and Arthur offered their visitors beds for the night, and though he intended to return sharp at seven the next morning, Moody naturally declined.

"You'll take Bill's room again, won't you dear?" Molly had said to Remus, it not being a question at all, and Moody had grunted:

"That way neither of you will be late!"

Except Moody had only been partially correct, for the next morning Remus had been downright early and yet his wife had been more than late for the meeting, she had been absent entirely. Merlin, what a mess! It had been bloody awful, it had been...well...

"What happened?" Teddy asked, some minutes after Moody's recollections had lapsed into silence.

Moody fidgeted uneasily in his seat.

"I've never seen such hysteria, lad." he admitted darkly. "Not in all my years! Molly Weasley was in bits, sobbing into a tea towel, Hestia Jones looked as if somebody had died...even Shacklebolt...bloody tears in his eyes, I saw them! Clinging onto your mother like his life depended on it and...and blinking back tears! A man like that, for Merlin's sake!"

"Yes, but what happened?!"

Moody sighed heavily, face contorting at the very memory.

"You have to understand, lad." he said, gazing across the dimly lit room at the boy curled up upon the chair opposite. "Your father...he loved your mother like nothing else, I've no doubt about that. But he'd never thought himself good enough for her, not even once he'd married her. We bullied him into it, we all did, we thought it was for his own good...that he'd realise he was perfectly good enough once he gave himself a chance. Except they'd only been married for a week, lad. One week isn't much of a chance at all and when he found out what your mother had done...when he found out this...this perfect witch of his who he didn't deserve had made an even more dreadful sacrifice for him than marrying him had ever been...well he couldn't stand it, Ted. He couldn't live with himself, felt he had to do something! So he did the only thing he could, and he did it fast before anybody could bloody well change his mind like they had before! And that's what made it so awful. He did it without discussion, with barely a second thought, and it broke your mother's heart, I've no doubt about that..."

Moody had been sat waiting impatiently at the kitchen table with Shacklebolt shuffling papers in a distinctly irritating fashion as Molly fussed about constructing a mountain of buttery toast for breakfast, when they heard the sound of footsteps dashing down the stairs and Remus half-skidded into the room, looking very much as if he had just tumbled out of bed.

"Morning." Moody had grunted, eying the werewolf's shirt disapprovingly, half the buttons done up incorrectly and the rest abandoned all together.

"Molly!" Remus exclaimed rather breathlessly, ignoring Moody entirely as he reached to grasp hold of the back of one of the kitchen chairs anxiously. "I...something's happened..."

"What's that?" Molly asked, abandoning the loaf of bread she was busy slicing and turning to face him, and Remus opened his mouth to blurt what Moody suspected was something truly dreadful, only to catch sight of the other people in the kitchen.

"Would you...come and look...?" he asked somewhat awkwardly instead. "I...it's Dora, she's...out of sorts..."

"Out of sorts?" Molly repeated, gaze darting towards Moody worriedly. "In...in what way, Remus dear?"

"Well she's...I'm not really...I've no idea how, but..."

"Well get up there, then!" Moody snapped impatiently, making Molly visibly jump. "Is she decent?!"

"Decent enough..." Remus mumbled, face ashen with worry, and Moody exclaimed:

"Well then! Get upstairs, Molly, and see what's wrong with the lass!"

Molly shot the old Auror one last petrified glance before making for the stairs, and no sooner had Remus disappeared after her, Moody slumped in his seat.

"Merlin, what's he done to her?" he growled despairingly, and Kingsley wondered:

"Are you sure it's him? Perhaps it's something else..."

"You think he'd come bolting down the stairs half dressed like that if she had the bloody flu or something?!"

"No, I just...Merlin, what're we going to do?!"

They sat and waited in silence, not daring to even breathe a greeting to see Hestia Jones arrive for the Order meeting, until the heard footsteps and Molly reappeared, flushed pink, eyes watery.

"Oh, the state of her!" she exclaimed, voice several octaves higher than usual, and Moody demanded:

"What's wrong with her?!"

"Oh Alastor, she's all...all pale and clammy and...and she was barely conscious when I got up there! She's all light headed and...oh, it was awful! There's the most dreadful mark across her stomach! All blistering and red! Remus has no idea, he really doesn't, he says she was fine when they went to sleep! He says he woke at some point because he had his arm around her and she'd grown so warm it was uncomfortable, but...but he didn't think anything of it! I...I said she had to...had to tell him! She has to tell him the truth, doesn't she? She must! Oh, she's in such a state! I gave her the last of the pepper-up potion I made last week and she's an awful not better already but...but! She's telling him, I know she is, it's going to be awful!"

"Why don't I put the kettle on?" Hestia suggested nervously.

Everybody ignored her.

Silence stretched on what felt like an age and Moody strained to hear any noise from upstairs, any tiny hint as to what was happening...

Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty, half an hour...

_Bang!_ A door being thrown back on it's hinges as rushed footsteps upon the creaking stairs...

Molly snatched up a tea towel, hugging it anxiously and Hestia's shoulders hunched...

"Wait!" Tonks' voice half-shrieked, a the telling croak of somebody who had been crying for much too long. "You promised! You promised you wouldn't be like this, y...you said..."

"What in Merlin's name do you want me to do?!"

"I want you to...to...to be reasonable, Remus! I...just..."

Their audience went entirely unnoticed as they arrived in the kitchen, both stumbling, she resorting to clinging to the doorframe to stop herself from falling to the floor. As she struggled to regain her balance, Remus rounded on her, throwing his hands up in a somewhat wild gesture as he cried:

"LOOK AT YOURSELF, DORA! Just look!" His hands reached to grasp fistfuls of hair in sheer agitation at the notion as he reminded her: "I DID THAT! THAT WAS ME!"

"No..."

"That's what you said! We're cursed, you said, this is what it does to you, what it's been doing to you day after day...I...I've been draining the life out of you...you literally waste away at my touch..."

"It's not...not your fault, I...I don't care..."

"You don't care?!"  
>"No, I told you I don't care, it doesn't ma..."<p>

"You never care!"

"Of course I don't, I...I love you, I don't care if...if..."

"Well I care! I care an awful lot! One of us has to! You think I'm just going to...to carry on regardless until I...until I _kill_ you?!"

Molly burst into loud, gasping tears, and yet nobody seemed to notice.

"What're you going to do?" Tonks asked, eyes wide in panic. "J...just...just l...leave me?"

"What sort of a husband would I be if I didn't?" Remus asked, and she burst into fresh tears as she complained:

"Not any sort of a husband at all! Please, Sweetheart! We'll...we'll f...figure something out, we will!"

"What's to figure out, lass?" Moody asked despairingly. "There's no breaking as evil a curse as that!"

"Then what's the bloody point?!" Tonks cried, managing a stumbling step forward. "I don't regret it, I won't! It doesn't matter what you say, I'd do it again in a heartbeat! But what's the point of it?! What's the use if I'm going to lose you anyway!"

"There never was a point to it, Dora." Remus pointed out bleakly. "You should never have done it..."

"There was every point to it!" she declared, taking a few imploring steps forward, causing him to stumble back into a chair in his attempts to stay away from her. "I love you! You mean the world to me! And if I can choose between half a life with you and having you ripped away from me entirely then I'll pick you over old age in an instant! If I dropped dead next week I'd die glad! Glad to have shared another few days with you!"

"I'll watch you drop dead next week, shall I?" Remus suggested, visibly trembling in horror at the idea. "I'll let you die for a couple more days of married life and then I'll live out the rest of your years on my own, knowing it was all down to me?! You think I'd rather risk that happening than save you?!"

"I just didn't want to lose you!" With a few more stumbling steps she had closed the gap between them and Moody felt the urge to bark a warning of some sort as she grasped hold of the front of Remus' robes, the werewolf going rigid in panic at the gesture. "I still don't want to lose you! We can think of something! We can find a way, it doesn't have to...to be like this..."

"Dora, let go of me..." Remus pleaded, flattening himself back until the chair was at risk of toppling over, but she merely slumped against him, burying her face in his chest with a whimper.

"P...please stay!" she begged as he reached gingerly to try and prise her away from him. "P...please! I...I'll...I'll do an...any...th...thing..."

"For Merlin's sake, Kingsley, do something!" Moody hissed despairingly as Hestia's forehead came to rest upon the table, and Kingsley swallowed the lump in his throat before getting to his feet. He hurried around the table and reached to lay a firm hand upon Tonks' shoulder...

She let out a shriek of protest, instantly flinging her arms around Remus' middle and as he screwed his eyes shut, wincing at the gesture.

"Please, Dora, it's for the best..."

"No!" she cried, Kinglsey's moment of hesitation leaving her to jerk free of his grasp. "It's not! It's not best, it...it's not, it c...can't be!"

And to Moody's surprise the werewolf abruptly halted his futile resistance and reached to throw his arms around her, hugging her tightly.

"Oh my darling!" the Auror heard him whisper brokenly as he pressed a burning kiss to her forehead, the skin growing pink against his lips. "If only I were dead!"

And with that Kingsley reached to seize her around the middle, and Moody watched Remus push the grief-stricken witch into the tall Auror's arms, and as his wife was dragged helplessly off towards the sitting room, the werewolf screwed his eyes firmly shut against her feeble fight to break free...

"And that was that." Moody recalled sombrely as Teddy stared bleakly into the dying flames crackling in the fireplace. "He disappeared out the door and didn't come back."

"She didn't hear from him again?" the boy whispered, troubled at the thought.

"Not for a long while." Moody recalled, reaching to carefully set about easing himself up out of his chair. "We saw him, of course. He carried on with duties for the Order, they both did. But he never came to meetings, he'd hear about them second hand. He was there the night we took Potter away from his relatives' house. Your mother wasn't. I made sure of that, got Hestia to replace her which was bloody risky, she wasn't half the flier your mother was! No, your father stayed well away from your mother from that day on, severed all ties with her..." With a nod towards the door the grizzled old Auror set about leading the way towards the hallway, and as Teddy slid out of his seat and set off curiously after him, Moody told him: "Until one day a week or so after we moved Potter. That was the day he sent her a letter..."


	5. The Sanctity of Life

_Note: I feel the urge to make you all aware of my fervent dislike of the Twilight Saga. _

_I would also like to point out that Trixie is responsible for at least 50% of this story because we have been figuring out the plot together. :-)_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**5: The Sanctity of Life**

Moody led the way slowly up the narrow, creaking staircase, wheezing a little at the effort, and at the top he crossed the landing to a door, where he paused, staring at the door handle suspiciously as if it might wrench itself at out of the wood and attack him.

Teddy came to a halt just behind him, rocking back on his heels a little impatiently.

"Well...?" the boy ventured after near on a minute had passed, and Moody let out an irritated huff.

"You're just like your mother!" he snapped, turning to scowl over his shoulder at the lad, whose hands were once again shoved in his pockets in a manner infuriatingly similar to his father. "She was always bloody impatient, to!" He went back to staring at the door again, frowning as he murmured: "But only with me, of course. With everybody else she had the patience of a saint. She had to, what with your father..." he trailed of with a snort before turning to eye Teddy somewhat accusingly as he told him: "I've not opened this door since Merlin knows when!"

"Why not?" Teddy wondered innocently, only for Moody's face to redden as he barked:

"Why not?! Would you go opening it if you were me?!"

"I don't know..." Teddy mumbled, bemused for he had no idea what was behind the door at all, and he looked quite confused when, despite his warnings, Moody reached forward to turn the door handle, and with that the door opened with a loud creak.

The elderly ex-Auror led the way slowly across the threshold into the room beyond. It was modest in size and sparsely furnished with a collection of dark wooden furniture. The walls had been papered in dull olive green and a thick layer of dust covered every surface. The clock upon the wall was stopped at thirteen minutes past eleven, and as he shuffled inside Teddy felt as if time really was standing still. The bed, stripped of everything save a mattress, dominated the room and the curtains drawn across the window left little light to puncture the gloom.

Without so much as a glance around, Moody made a beeline for a chest of drawers set in one corner, and as he set about rifling through their contents, Teddy stared at the stripped bed, his face paling.

"Is...is this...is this where...?"

"Where you were born?" Moody offered diplomatically. "That's right, lad."

"Then it's...it's where Mum..."

"That's right." He paused in his searching to glance over his shoulder at the boy, who was still staring at the bed, growing more pale by the second. "You can wait outside if you want." he grunted, casting a dark look at the bed himself, but Teddy shook his head.

Moody rather knew how the boy felt. He was not the sort of man to get unnerved by ghosts from the past, nor had he ever tended to allow his memories or imagination run away with him. And yet the air always seemed thick here in this room, strangled with pain and sorrow, clouded with death...

He had never felt like that about anything before. Charles Jones, a fellow Auror back in Moody's younger days, had once staggered into Moody's office at the Ministry and collapsed upon the rug before the fireplace. Moody had watched him squirm, cry out and foam at the mouth before succumbing to the poison that had been dripped into his morning coffee. It had been horrific. Moody had counted Jones as a good friend and there had been nothing to do but simply stand and watch him die. Afterwards there had been an inquiry and Moody had discovered a Death Eater spy amongst the Ministry's ranks. Moody had bundled him off to serve a life sentence in Azkaban. He'd escorted the scoundrel there in person.

And then he'd gone back to his office and carried on with life as usual.

But Moody had never gone back to normal after watching Nymphadora die. She had been stuck in this room for those last few months, bedridden and sickly, delirious by the last few weeks and unconscious for the majority of the last few days...

And then there had been that final day. It had been quite possibly the worst day of Moody's life, the screaming and the gasping and the blood and...

He'd resigned himself once and for all, after a few hours, that she wouldn't survive the trauma. And once he'd been certain he had been forced, just like Jones before, to stand and watch her die.

Nobody had come to move the body. Not until the next day. He'd sent for Shacklebolt and a few others but they had been forced to sit around downstairs for several hours.

It had taken him that long to persuade Remus to give her up.

As soon as she and indeed everybody else was gone he had stuffed all of her belongings away into drawers where he couldn't dwell upon them and stripped the bloodied sheets from the bed. He burnt the sheets to cinders in the garden and then gone to inspect his work.

He had expected to feel just as he had done before. He had expected to look around the room and feel...nothing. Perhaps a pang of sadness, but nothing too potent.

And yet he could do nothing but picture Nymphadora lying sweat-soaked upon the bed, her eyes drifting closed and her head lolling lifelessly against the pillow...

Sometimes he pictured her some while before her death, propped up in bed with a damp, cool flannel pressed precariously across her brow, eyes still twinkling and lips still curving into a wide grin as she mocked him for one paranoid habit or another.

He was not sure which image haunted him the most.

He'd left the room that time, closing the door firmly behind him, and he had rarely dared to venture inside it since for fear of the unwelcome memories and the sickness in his stomach...the weakness that seemed to seize him no matter how irrational he felt it was.

He reached to push aside an empty wash bag and at last spied what he had been searching for. Snatching up the faded envelope he turned to present it Teddy with a grunt of:

"Here."

"What is it?" Teddy asked, staring at the offering, and Moody reached to push it impatiently into his hand.

"The letter."

"That Dad sent to Mum?"

"Yes." Moody grunted, not interested in a more detailed explanation, and he watched the boy reach into the envelope to extract the carefully folded piece of parchment within.

_My Darling,_ Teddy read, squinting down at the rather scrawled text.

_Tell me how you are._ Remus had begun, only to draw a series of sharp lines through this request and instead begin:

_Don't write back. I'm sure I should not be writing at all, and yet_ …more scribbles, several lines of them Teddy saw until:

_I can't explain it, I know it is wrong of me but I am doing it all the same. _

_You knew it was wrong of you, didn't you? You must have. But you did it all the same too. You did it out of love, as mad as that sounds. I understand, darling. I really do. Because love does drive us mad, doesn't it? I feel perfectly nonsensical myself these days and the only sane realisation I have had is that this madness is all down to you. _

_Emmeline tells me you are at your parents' house. She says you have told them I am away on Order business. I'm sure Alastor has told you this a million times already, but you really must tell them the truth, Dora. There is not hiding from it. They are your parents, be honest with them. I have been here at Emmeline's for three nights now. I've been sleeping in her spare room and keeping a good eye on her since the Lestranges caught us out the other night. I'm sure you have heard all about it, Alastor was utterly furious when he found out, lectured poor Emmeline half to death. He was non too pleased with me, either. He says if you've bothered to ruin your life to save mine I had better take better care of myself, else it shall all go to waste. Perhaps he is right and I owe you an apology, my darling. I can at least promise that I am safe for the time being. Emmeline claims she owes you her life; she is quite certain Rodolphus would have struck her dead if I hadn't been there to spot him half a second before she did. They still got her, mind you, and she has been awfully frail. I have to help her up and down the stairs and she doesn't know what she will do when I must move on tomorrow morning. She has dubbed me her Guardian Angel. I wish I could watch over you so well, Dora. It drives me to distraction, being parted from you. I've barely slept in days, I worry about you so much now I cannot be there. Please take care, darling. The days are growing darker, they say we shall all be finished before long, that the Order is crumbling to dust and we shall all choke on it. Perhaps we'll breathe easy one of these days. Focus on that now, my darling, and please don't dwell on me. _

_I won't take it back, what I said when we parted. I shall never not wish that you left me to die. But if I must live for even a moment more without you I should be glad at least to think that you loved me so, that you would make such sacrifice for me and that you were mine for a time. Not an hour will pass without me thinking of you, not for as long as I live, because there has never been anybody so dear and precious to me as you. Remember that, my darling, and nothing else. Remember that I shall always love you, that you shall never be unloved for a single second. And forget everything else. You must not write back. Take my love and cast me away. I shall be glad of it, I truly shall. And yet I desperately long for you, I wish you could still be mine._

_With all my love and deepest sorrow, _

_Remus_

"That ought have been the end of it." Moody grunted when Teddy looked up at him, having finished reading. "They'd parted ways and that should have been that!"

"But Dad came back to her?" Teddy guessed, folding the parchment carefully in half and sliding it back into the envelope.

"He didn't want to." Moody recalled approvingly as he turned and set about leading the way back downstairs. "But in the end...he didn't have a choice."

"Why not?" Teddy asked, eying the chest of drawers for a moment before choosing to pocket the letter instead.

"Because I bloody well told him so!" Moody said, sounding distinctly annoyed at himself. "Didn't make the blindest bit of difference though, did it? In the end..."

They retreated back into the sitting room and for a moment Moody busied himself pouring himself a generous glassful of whiskey.

"When she got that letter your mother was utterly heartbroken. She'd been kidding herself, you see, that one day your father was just going to show up at an Order meeting or something of the sort, that she'd see him again. But all she got was the letter. She read it over and over. Then, for once in her life, your mother chose to listen to what your father said. She went to her parents and told them the truth about what had happened."

"What did they say?" Teddy wondered, and as he settled himself back down in his chair Moody gave a snort.

"Merlin knows, I suspect they said all sorts of things! They were utterly mortified, obviously. Your grandmother, especially. She and your mother had a terrible falling out...terrible, terrible falling out! And your mother was so bloody stubborn and angry about it that she packed up her bags and left their house for good!"

"Where did she go?"

"Oh here and there...bit like your father for a while, she was. Slept on sofas and in spare rooms for a couple of weeks. But then she showed up here for a night and I noticed something was wrong."

"What sort of thing?" Teddy asked, and Moody chuckled darkly and murmured:

"Oh, the worst thing bloody possible! And that was bloody typical, really. Only your mother could be that bloody stupid! And I told her that, too..."

He'd sat at the table that morning, smothering marmalade onto toast, pressing the knife so firmly down upon the bread that it became somewhat flattened, waiting both impatiently and apprehensively for her to grace him with her presence. He had polished off his breakfast and was on a second cup of tea when she finally shuffled into the room, dropping down into the chair opposite him with not so much as a mumbled good morning.

He eyed her pale face and noted the dark bags under her eyes, before snorting irritably into his teacup. She pretended not to notice and reached to pour herself a cup of tea.

"Sleep alright?" he grunted, still eying her over the rim of his cup, and she nodded blandly.

"Mm."

"Doesn't look like it."

"Looks can be deceiving, Mad-Eye." she murmured sleepily as she poured the steaming liquid into a cup. "You of all people should know that."

"Didn't sound like it, either." he pointed out, barely resisting the urge to snap angrily at her for trying to be bloody clever. After all he already had something to be furious about and he was more keen to get straight to that point instead.

Nymphadora merely smiled thinly and took a sip of tea.

"I heard you." he informed her accusingly. "In the bathroom this morning."

In response, the young witch merely raised an eyebrow.

That slight movement instantly tipped him over the edge, and he slammed his teacup down upon the table with such force that it made her jump, sloshing burning hot tea into her lap. As she hastily set her own cup down, muttering obscenities under her breath and snatching her wand from her pocket to clear away the mess, he snapped:

"Don't you bloody well ignore me! This is serious!"

"I know, Mad-Eye." she muttered wearily. "I'm not stupid..."

"Are you not?! Well that's bloody news to me!"

"Stop shouting at me, for Merlin's sake!" Nymphadora muttered, shooting him a scowl as with a wave of her wand the spillage simply dried into an ugly looking stain upon her trousers. "This isn't first year Auror training, you know, I'm not a bloody teenager anymore..."

"No, it's bloody worse than that!" Moody roared, banging a fist down upon the table that, rather than making her jump, made her scowl more than ever. "You've gone and got yourself bloody knocked up!"

The witch's face contorted indignantly.

"Remus and I are married, Mad-Eye." she pointed out irritably. "It's not called getting _knocked up_ if..."

"I don't bloody care what you call it!" Moody interrupted furiously "How did you manage it, for Merlin's sake?!"

Nymphadora simply stared at him, her mouth dropping open every so slightly.

"Are you seriously asking me that?" she asked after a rather horrified pause, and he very nearly slammed his fist down upon the table again in frustration.

"I don't mean it like that and you know it!" he snapped. "This isn't a bloody joke, Nymphadora!"

"I know it isn't."

"It's a bloody disaster, that's what it is! _Pregnant_, for Merlin's sake! In the middle of a war! With the father bloody gone! You'll have to...to you know..."

She looked instantly offended.

He hadn't been expecting that.

"Are you telling me to get rid of it?!" she asked, sitting straighter in her chair, and he shrugged and pointed out:

"Well obviously that is the only logical course of action..."

"_Logical course of action_?!" she repeated, leaning back in her chair in disgust. "You're a heartless bastard, Mad-Eye, did you know that?!"

"Well surely you're not entertaining the idea of keeping it..."

"Why ever not?!"

Moody managed a rather horrified chuckle.

"Be reasonable, lass!" he told her quietly in a vain attempt to stem her fury. "You don't want to bring a child into all this, do you? These are dark times, Nymphadora, they're dark, dark times!"  
>"I know what they bloody are!" she snapped, folding her arms firmly across her chest. "I'm living in them!"<p>

"D'you want that for your child, then?"  
>"Remus says the war will be over soon enough."<p>

"Aye, and what if we're on the losing side, what then?! And what about beforehand?! If it's no time for a child it's no time for an expecting mother either! You need your strength, you need your health!"

"I'm not sick, Mad-Eye, I'm pregnant! I'll be fine. Anyway, I've already made my mind up. I've known about it for a week already, I've given it plenty of thought and I've decided I'm going to keep it. I don't give a toss what you have to say on the matter, either. I'm going to owl Remus and tell him about it..."

"And you think he'll come running back, d'you?!"

"I hope so. It's his child, after all..."

"This is what it's all about, isn't it?! You're going to ruin your life...again! Just on the bloody off chance Remus is stupid enough to come back to you..."

"There's nothing stupid about it! There's absolutely nothing stupid about choosing to be there for your own child!"

Moody gave an irritably snort.

"There's everything stupid about it when you're half certain to kill it's bloody mother in the process!" he snapped, irritated that her expression only grew more defiant. "He won't come back! I'm telling you now!"

"Well we'll see about that."

"Aye! And what're you going to do if I'm right and he doesn't?!"

And to his upmost despair she smiled rather brokenly and told him:

"Then I'll be even more glad I've kept the baby because he or she will be the only part of Remus I'll have left."

As he sat before the fireplace, scowling down into his lap, Moody informed the baby in question:

"I told her that was the most bloody selfish thing I'd ever heard in my life. She didn't like that. Started ranting about how I was being heartless and how I had no respect for the sanctity of life or Merlin knows what. I'd never imagined her to be so bloody righteous about something like that...but then again I never thought she'd go and get pregnant in the middle of a bloody war, either!"

"So she wrote to my dad?" Teddy said, leaning forward in his chair rather eagerly to hear what came next, only for his face to fall a little when Moody shook his head.

"Oh no," he said, "she didn't write to him then...never did, actually."

"Why not?" Teddy wondered, sounding rather confused and as he took a generous gulp of whiskey, the old wizard suggested:

"Nerves, maybe. She was scared, you know, that he might not return to her. She'd been in a right state you see, miserable, utterly listless! But she changed when she found out she was pregnant, she had hope that your father would come back...that the three of you would be some sort of happy family or something stupid like that. So she waited and waited...until it was too late."

"Too late...?"

Moody sighed heavily, reaching to rub a weary hand across his wrinkled forehead.

"First of all," he said, reaching to set his glass down upon the coffee table. "I made her stay here with me. Didn't think it right you know...letting her sleep on sofas and floors in her condition. I gave her a room of her own and...kept an eye on her..." He sighed again, leaning back in his chair and allowing his good eye to drift closed as he recalled: "I started noticing...signs..."

"Signs?"

"Little things...she'd open all the windows and complain it was too warm, she'd come over faint every few hours, complain of pains in her stomach...burning pains. At first of course I put it all down to her being pregnant...but after a while...well...it occurred to me that it was almost as if...as if your father were back. Like it was before he left her. And that got me thinking, I got out those books I'd lent your mother all those years ago, the ones mentioning Blood Magic, and I studied them for days..." Moody opened his eye in order to fix the boy sat opposite him with a grim expression as he recalled: "And that's when I realised the truth. I gave up waiting for her to write to your father and I went to find him myself. Because she needed to get rid of that baby, lad. And I was sure only your father could make her see sense..."

He tracked him down to Shacklebolt's house in London, pouring aimlessly over maps and attempting to keep himself busy.

"Your missus is sleeping in my spare room." he informed him as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen, not bothering with a more conventional greeting. "She and her mother haven't seen eye to eye about what's happened."

Remus didn't look up from the papers upon the kitchen table before him, but Moody watched him squeeze his eyes shut.

"Perhaps you might encourage them to patch things up..." he suggested, not sounding terribly hopeful and Moody very nearly laughed because they both knew full well that when it came to patching things up after an argument Nymphadora was...well...downright impossible.

"There's more." Moody said, taking an uneasy step into the room, only for Remus to insist:

"I don't wish to know about it."

"I don't believe that for a second!" Moody growled, stomping forward so that he could loom over the table, staring down at the werewolf in what most would find an intimidating manner, but instead Remus merely went back to staring at the papers in front of him. "You love that girl, eh?! Then you'll hear me out anyway!" he insisted, sounding bordering on threatening. "I've told her you won't come back to her, told her you'd be a fool if you did. But I was wrong. You need to come back..."

"I can't, Alastor." Remus interrupted, visibly flinching at the idea. "You know I can't..."

"You haven't got a bloody choice!" Moody insisted, reaching to grasp hold of the table with both hands so that he could lean forward, eyes piercing the top of the werewolf's head until he reluctantly looked up. "You've got to talk some sense into her! She won't listen to anybody else!"

"About what?" Remus asked, frowning deeply, only to grow white as a sheet when Moody informed him flatly:

"She's pregnant! She's bloody pregnant with _your_ child! _Your_ child with _your_ blood running through its veins! And you've got to bloody well do something about it, Remus! Because it'll kill her, mark my words!"


	6. Dousing Flames In Salted Water

_Note: Urgh! Worst chapter ever! It's my first time writing from this character's POV, and it's probably not perfect. Or even halfway decent. But my lectures begin again tomorrow and this is my last update of the holidays. So, perfect or not, I am posting! Because I have no idea when I will next have the chance to write! Thank you to everybody who has been reading and reviewing this story! You make me smile! _

_Meanwhile, I have been writing a Meet the... oneshot that is in the present tense and now seem to be stuck in it. I've tried to correct any mistakes below, but if you do spot any simply feel sorry for my lack of brain power. _

**6: Dousing Flames In Salted Water**

Despite what season's greeting cards had led people believe, the prospect of a white Christmas in southern England was a rare one. But with a thick layer of snow upon the ground and just days to go before the big day, it might well happened.

It was strange, Fleur Weasley mused as she stared out the kitchen window at the children running shrieking and laughing around in the snow outside, their faces flushed with cold as they bombarded one another with snowballs, that a picture perfect Christmas could look anything but festive.

No adult from the Potter-Weasley clan felt festive recently.

Not when it was their turn to have Teddy stay for the day, at least.

Poor Teddy was a changed boy, now that his grandmother had died. It had only been a matter of weeks ago, but the change in him was startlingly obvious. Even to Fleur, who saw him only occasionally. It wasn't that he was particularly distraught or tearful, but more that he appeared to have aged several decades on the spot. He was extremely serious and quiet, spending the vast majority of his time sitting apart from everybody else, refusing the younger children's attempts to coax him into a game or conversation. Since Harry had escorted Teddy over to Shell Cottage that morning along with his own children so that he and Ginny could disappear off to do a spot of last minute Christmas shopping in peace, Teddy had barely moved from his perch upon the sofa in the sitting room.

It was dreadful, Fleur thought, for the poor boy to lose his grandmother so early, when he had already lost his mother.

And father, really. Because Remus was as good as lost to him. To all of them.

She'd been quite fond of Remus, in a way. They had rarely spoke at much length, truth be told, he was much too quiet and had easily escaped her notice, but every once in a while at an Order meeting he would abruptly come out with some little comment or another that would make her howl with laughter.

Bill had really liked him, championed him as one of the few wholly decent men left in the world. The pair of them had taken to having long conversations about all sorts of things at meetings ever since Greyback had made the pair kindred spirits of sorts.

Bill was certain Remus was dead. He'd said as much just a few weeks back when they had first heard of Andromeda's death. He hadn't known why, he'd claimed, but he just knew it.

Fleur knew why. Remus was most likely dead because he simply had no inclination to live.

Fleur knew this because she knew the full strength and power of love, which was a devastating and terrible thing. There was no chance Remus survived what had happened to Tonks all those years ago, Fleur was sure of it. Because that had been the one thing about Remus and Tonks that had struck Fleur the most; not their unlikeliness, not their defiance, but their love. Their fierce, boundless, hopeless, pitiful love that had burnt their world to ashes and had scorched everyone around them by the end. After such burning fire there was nothing but darkness, and if she were Remus she would have cast herself away into it. Because there had probably been no way out that he could see, not in darkness as thick as that.

Shuffling sock-clad footsteps upon tiles.

Fleur turned her back on the window to find Teddy stood just inside the door, arms wrapped around himself as he cast a slow, considering look around the kitchen before shuffling over to sit down at the little kitchen table.

"Are you cold, Ted?" Fleur asked, reaching to pick up her wand so that she could set the remainder of the plates from lunch to wash themselves in the sink. "Go fetch yourself a jumper out of zee wardrobe upstairs if you want. Bill won't mind."

Teddy frowned down at his socks, mumbling a no thank you of one form or another.

"Have you been outside yet?" Fleur tried instead, offering him a smile over her shoulder as she set about casting a preserving charm over the leftover sandwiches, before storing them in a cupboard. "I 'ope Victoire has remembered her wellington boots, it eez slippery out there!"

For a long moment, Teddy was entirely unresponsive.

When he did speak, Fleur promptly began to wish that he hadn't.

"The Order met here sometimes, didn't they? After Grimmauld Place was lost."

"Oui."

"My parents met here, didn't they? When Dad found out Mum was pregnant he came here, didn't he?"

Merlin, she didn't want to talk about that. None of it. Not that day, not any of the days afterwards. Absolutely none of it...

"'O told you zat?"

"Mad-Eye Moody."

She managed an odd little chuckle and asked:

"What are you doing, going round asking questions like zat, hm?"

"Did you see what happened, when my parents were here I mean?" Teddy asked, ignoring her unease entirely.

She reached to slide a stray strand of silvery blonde hair behind her ear, taking far too much care over it.

"I...I saw and 'eard lots of things, Ted. We all did."

"What happened?"

She sighed heavily, eyes screwed shut for a pained moment.

Because she knew she could not possibly refuse to tell him anything.

"There was...a lot of shouting." she recalled, snatching up a handful of cutlery and beginning to carefully set it away in a drawer, a distraction of sorts because standing still seemed tricky. "It...it wasn't very nice." She huffed, shaking her head as she told the boy: "We had our differences, your mother and I. But I admired 'er, you know. I 'ad a lot of reespect for 'er. I never realized it at first, but she was a formidable witch. And she was ze only one I ever knew who could so easily reduce a grown man to tears..."

It had been a surprising and abrupt beginning.

It had been rather rude, too, she'd thought initially, surprisingly forceful and consequently rather shocking.

Fleur had never seen Remus behave in such a way. Not ever.

The rest of the Order had been clustered in the sitting room of Shell Cottage, waiting for the last few stragglers to arrive. Tonks had been keeping herself to herself, leaning against the wall and staring somewhat blankly at the clock above the fireplace, ignoring Fleur's offer of a cup of tea, which had been quite a relief because Fleur liked her china un-smashed. Moody had arrived a few minutes late, which might very well have been the most shocking event of the evening had things not gone abruptly downhill just a few minutes later. For the meantime, however, things had been reassuringly normal. Moody had taken to standing in a corner so that he could easily fix a scowl onto his face and stare at the side of Tonks' head.

Tonks made her usual effort to ignore him.

And then Remus stepped in from the hallway.

Everybody stared.

Fleur offered him a polite greeting and a cup of tea, just as she had everybody else, but the werewolf ignored her, gaze roaming searchingly around the staring faces until he finally locked gazes with his wife.

From the look on Tonks' face, Fleur thought, it might just as well have been Voldemort stepping into their midst.

It was as if all of her hope and defiance had instantly died.

And Remus had strode purposefully across the room, reaching to yank the sleeve of his robes down over his hand before reaching to grasp hold of the metamorphmagus firmly by the arm.

"Kitchen, darling." Fleur had heard him murmur firmly, and Tonks' gaze had promptly snapped over to look at Moody standing in the corner.

"What've you done?! You...you had...you had no right to go behind my back!" she cried, eyes wide in horror as the rest of the Order all glanced somewhat guiltily down at their laps.

The one guilty member amongst them, however, made no sign of remorse at all.

"You wanted him back, didn't you?" Moody grunted, folding his arms firmly across his chest, and Tonks promptly declared:

"I bloody hate you! I...I HATE YOU!"

"Aye, but it's for your own good." Moody growled, entirely remorseless, and as Remus set about half-dragging her surprisingly forcefully off towards the kitchen by the arm, the mousy-haired witch had snapped:

"I won't forgive you, Mad-Eye! I won't!"

"Suits me perfectly, lass." Moody assured her grimly, stomping forward to take a seat in an armchair. "I haven't forgiven you, either."

"We were all listening, of course." Fleur admitted to Teddy as she struggled to find anything else to busy herself with, at last being forced to go and sit down across the table from the boy. "We were all waiting to hear something. That Hestia Jones, she eez dreadful! She wanted to go and peer through the keyhole! And then...and then your mother started shouting and we could all 'ear her! She didn't care who heard, I don't think. She was too upset..."

"Do you think they're alright in there?" Hestia hissed, shifting impatiently in her seat, and Fleur was just opening her mouth to utter something similar when Moody snapped:

"Not bloody likely! Now shut up!"

"Maybe somebody should go and check on them..." Hestia began, and Moody's magical eye spun furiously in its socket as the grizzled old Auror drew breath to snap at her again, only for a sudden voice from the kitchen to shriek:

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'RE SAYING?!"

"Oh dear..." Arthur Weasley murmured as beside him his wife reached to press a hand to her mouth.

"My bet's on Tonks." Fred Weasley murmured. "She can shout much louder than he can..."

"Be quiet, Fred!" his mother snapped furiously, and Fleur promptly agreed:

"Yes, be quiet! This eez not a laughing matter, you know!"

The shouting became somewhat hysterical within a few minutes and very one sided, and Fleur couldn't help but feel that the incident had sunk to a knew low when at long last Remus seemingly lost his temper and shouted:

"This isn't bloody Arithmacy, Dora, it's incredibly simple! If you don't get rid of it, it's going to kill you!"

"And if it doesn't?" Tonks shot back, sounding abruptly less tearful, as if him shouting at her somehow made the whole conversation much easier to cope with.

"There's no _if_ about it!"

"Of course there is! I might live long enough, I might survive!"

"Why in Merlin's name would you want to take such a stupid risk?!"

"It's not stupid, Remus! It's our CHILD!"

There came the sound of somebody slamming a fist down upon a table, and Fleur found herself wincing.

"Dora..." Remus began again after a sizeable pause, managing to sound marginally calmer, only for the witch to repeat:

"It's our child, Remus! You can't tell me to get rid of it! You can't...you can't _want_ me to get rid of it! You can't want me to get rid of _your own child_..."

"I don't _want_ a child, Dora! I don't want it! I really, really don't..."

"How can you say that?!"

"What I want is for you to be well and healthy! That's all I want! That's all that matters to me, I don't want anything else!"

"I can't get rid of it. I just can't do it!"

"Dora, how many times do I have to tell you?! It will kill you! It's killing you as we speak..."

"I don't care! There's nothing more to say about it! We're done here! Let's get on with the meeting, everybody's waiting for us."

"But..."

"I said I don't care, Remus!"

And with that the door was flung unceremoniously open, and as she stomped furiously out into the sitting room Tonks seemed utterly oblivious to everybody staring at her.

"It doesn't matter what you say! I just...I don't care!" she concluded, turning to offer the werewolf sat back in the kitchen an expectant look as if he ought simply get up and follow her.

Remus appeared to be choking on his frustration as he reached to grip the sides of his chair, and he eventually managed to exclaim:

"For the love of Merlin! Dora, I swear...! If I hear you utter those three words _one more time_...!"

The Order gave a collective wince, and Fleur reached to grasp hold of Bill by the hand.

"Bill!" she hissed as Tonks promptly marched furiously back into the kitchen. "Do something!"

"What?!" Bill hissed back, utterly alarmed, only for Hestia at his other side to squeak:

"She's going to hex him!"

"Don't be ridiculous..." Bill mouthed back, and though Fleur agreed it was a stupid notion she felt him reach to slip his hand into his pocket, grasping hold of his wand as if he didn't quite think it ridiculous at all...

Fleur rather wished somebody would say something, anything really. She didn't like silences like this, they were awkward and horrible and the aftermath was going to be so messy and...

Tonks had come to a abrupt halt, stood so close to Remus that her legs were almost brushing against his knees. He visibly shuffled back in his seat away from her, but this proved to be a somewhat futile move.

She leant forward, face mere inches from his, face flushed with colour as she drew in a deep breath and informed him through clenched teeth:

"I. Don't. Care."

"And when she told 'im that," Fleur recalled, gaze fixated upon the tabletop as Teddy stared at her intently, "your father just...just _wept_!"

"He _cried_?" Teddy breathed, sounding somewhat appalled.

"Oh yes, Ted, 'e just broke down! Buried his face in his hands and slumped against this table 'ere. Just like that! 'E wept, I'm sure of it. 'E didn't make a sound, but 'e was shaking with tears, we all saw it."

"What...what did Mum do then?" Teddy asked, and Fleur shook her head dismally at the memory when she told the boy:

"She threw 'er arms around 'im. She clung to 'im until she burned."


	7. Protection

_Note: Sneaky chapter before the work truly kicks off! Bet you didn't see that coming!_

_Sadly it's ridiculously short because I only started writing it today! Still...hope you like it! That's the way things might be in the future, I'm afraid. Short, but hopefully sweet. Or tragic. Or both. Who knows! (I should do...but I don't...) :-)_

_I'm ranting because it's late at night and I am sleep deprived! So let me get on to the important bit:_

_I would like to thank **whoever recommended this story to** **HouseMDforever** – how very kind of you to do so! And of course thank you to **HouseMDforever herself**, for leaving me some very nice reviews! Apologies for my fondness of the word "bloody" - I'm clearly much too British for my own good, although I must confess that the irony you pointed out does rather amuse me, and is more of an encouragement than a deterrent! _

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**7: Protection**

"Something changed, then. Something was different. It must have been," Fleur recalled quietly, sighing heavily. "Because 'e stayed with 'er. 'E never left 'er, not after that day."

"Why would he change just like that?" Teddy asked, leaning forward until his elbows were resting upon the table, and the witch gave a strained laugh.

"Because 'e was _weak_!" she said, one delicate hand balling into a tight fist upon the table. "And because your mother was _weak_!" At the distinctly hurt expression that materialised upon Teddy's face, Fleur reached across the table to grasp hold of him firmly by the hand, giving it a shake as she insisted: "We are all weak, Teddy! All of us who fall in love! We fall so easily, so deeply that we are not strong enough to ever let it go! And our weakness, it makes us strong! There is no strength greater, mon cher! We beat Voldemort with it! We wouldn't give in because we wanted a better, safer world and we did it out of love! Your mother, she beat Bellatrix with it! She would not let that vile creature take your father away from 'er! She made a great sacrifice to save 'im and she did it out of love! Your mother bore you out of it! She would not give you up, Teddy, not for anything! Not for life itself! She risked herself out of love for you, so that you might live! And your father, 'e stood by 'er because of it! 'E knew she was dying, knew she would not change 'er mind and that 'e could not save 'er! So 'e gave 'er the best protection 'e could manage! The most powerful protection 'e could ever have given! 'E gave 'er himself! 'E gave her his _love_."

She'd caught glimpses of them throughout the months, and they always made her sigh.

She had abandoned her washing up in the kitchen at The Burrow one day after lunch to watch Tonks slip downstairs from taking a nap in Percy's old room, to sneak into the sitting room where Remus was sat reading a book, and after a pause to check that he had failed to notice her standing behind his chair, the metamorphmagus reached to adjust a pair of elbow-length gloves upon her fingers, before reaching forward to clamp her hands over the werewolf's eyes.

He jumped so badly the book slipped out of his hands and tumbled to the floor, and Fleur had allowed herself the smallest of titters as Tonks had leant to whisper in his ear:

"Boo."

The sound of her voice had failed to relax Remus in the slightest, until she removed her hands from his eyes in order to wave them around in front of him, wiggling her fingers as she announced proudly:

"Gloves! Long ones!"

Remus slumped back in his chair, a puff of relief tinged with weariness escaping his lips.

"Well?" Tonks said, prancing surprisingly nimbly around the chair until she was stood in front of him, thrusting a hand out for his inspection. "What d'you think?"

"What do I think?" he repeated, straightening up and reaching to carefully take hold of her hand, touch so light that she might very well be made of glass.

"Mm." Tonks said, lips pursed together against a grin.

"Well..." the werewolf decided, slowly drawing her hand forward towards him.

"Well?"

"I think..."

"You think?"

He reached to press his lips against the soft, pale cotton shielding her knuckles, and she instantly grinned.

"I think," he decided, voice barely more than a mumble that Fleur could hardly catch as he paused to drop a kiss against the fabric, steadily drawing her closer and closer, reduced to murmurs between kisses as he worked his way slowly up her arm. "I like them...very...very..._very_ much indeed..."

The further towards her elbow he drew, the more she smiled, breaking out into laughter that very nearly made the onlooker smile too, only for it to die an abrupt death when Remus suddenly froze.

The two of them stayed stock still, his scalding lips a mere fraction of an inch above her bare arm, breath dousing her skin with warmth...

"Will you not do it?" Tonks breathed, staring down at him intently. "Just the once?"

In response, he hastily dropped her hand and leant back in his seat.

"How did you sleep?" he asked instead, and she frowned deeply and muttered:

"Much too easily." She turned and set about pacing up and down before the fireplace, fingers fiddling fretfully with the hem of one glove.. "I do that too often these days, don't I? I...I just...I just can't seem to keep awake..."

Fleur's stomach seemed to twist into knots a little as Remus rose from his chair, reaching to retrieve the fallen book and setting it down upon the the vacated seat.

"Why don't you sit down, darling?" he suggested calmly. "Let me fetch you a glass of water."

Tonks shuffled over to drop down upon the sofa with a sigh, gaze drifting up towards the ceiling, and Remus had almost reached the kitchen door when she called him back:

"Remus...?"

He paused to look round at her, and as she reached to rest a somewhat tentative hand atop the small swell of her stomach, Tonks admitted:

"I'm frightened."

And for a long moment Remus stood, his lips pursed together as he gazed over at her despairingly.

"And you are _so_ brave." he assured her, and with that he made to turn away again only for her to complain:

"I don't know what...what's going to happen. I don't know what's going to happen to me...or I do but I...I don't know..." she trailed off, face contorting anxiously before straightening up a little and explaining: "I decided...years ago, back when I was at school and first heard of it...that it wasn't a bad way to go...being hit by the Killing Curse, I mean. I always thought...even if it hurt it would only hurt for...for less than a second, it sounded so quick! And...and this whole time...ever since the War began I just thought...well...you know...if I...if I was going to die the chances are I'd...I'd just _die_. Just...just like..." She raised a hand and gave her fingers a somewhat feeble snap that nevertheless made Fleur cringe. "Just like that!" Tonks sniffed, reaching to swipe a sleeve across her eyes that had grown watery. "But...but that's...that's not going to...that's not going to be me anymore, is it Remus? I...I'm going to...I'm going to go, but it...it won't be just like that at all! It'll be...I'll just...I'm going to just...for months...!"

"Shhh." Remus interrupted, hurrying over to her, and for a moment Fleur thought he would throw his arms around her, only for him to pause, at a slight loss for a moment. His hesitation only seemed to distress the mumbling witch further, and he hastily dropped down into a crouch in front of her, reaching to take hold of her by gloved-hands.

"Listen to me, Dora." the werewolf said, pausing to swallow the lump in his throat that was causing his voice to waver. "_Listen to me_. My darling, you are _not_ going to die!"

As Tonks simply shook her head vigorously, Fleur was forced to bury her face in the nearest tea towel that she could lay her hands upon.

"You don't believe that! You don't, you never have...you...you said so! You said it's going to kill me! Mad-Eye...Mad-Eye t...told me again o...only yesterday..."

"It doesn't matter what we believe, Dora."

"B...but..."

"What matters is what _you _believe. And you don't believe you're going to die, darling. I know you say you do now, but you don't. You can't believe it entirely, my darling, because you have hope! If you had no hope at all you would have done as I asked you! If you had no hope at all you would have gotten rid of the child!"

As she drew the tea towel away and used to to dab at her eyes instead, Fleur watched the werewolf reach to draw the witch's hands up until he could press them to his face, gazing up at her intently.

"Don't you lose that hope, my love." he insisted, voice not much more than a whisper. "Because I _love_ you, Dora. And that hope of yours is all that keeps me going."

Tonks managed a somewhat watery smile, and with a sniff she scuffed a thumb carefully against his cheek before confessing:

"Sometimes I wonder how you can love me at all. Sometimes I think you'll wake up one morning and be all...all bitter and angry with me like Mad-Eye."

"Oh no," the werewolf insisted, managing the ghost of a smile. "Don't ever think a thing like that. I won't ever not love you, Dora. No matter what happens, I will _always_ love you."

"And let me tell you something, Teddy Remus Lupin." Fleur said, leaning across the table, her beautiful eyes piercing the boy straight through the heart. "If your father 'ad not been there in those last months, if your mother 'ad not 'ad the protection of 'is _love_...you would not be sitting across this table from me, mark my words! Because that protection kept your mother alive, she would 'ave faded so much faster without it. She'd have died long before she 'ad ze chance to give birth to you! You 'ave both your parents' love to thank for you being 'ere."


	8. Hand In Hand

_Note: It is a complete mystery as to how this got written. But it did! I hope you all enjoy it! :-)_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**8: Hand In Hand**

He spent a lot of time writing letters, these days.

Which seemed unreasonable, really, because he had an army of secretaries and assistants who did most of that. All he needed to do was scrawl an elaborate signature at the bottom of each sheet of parchment. But there were some letters, far too many of them really, that he felt he ought write himself.

Like the one he'd written yesterday to the widow of a recently deceased Auror, sending her his condolences on behalf of both himself and the Ministry of Magic.

Like the one he'd written a couple of days ago to St. Mungo's Hospital, informing them of the Wizengamot's plans for health reform that would no doubt make all the staff there irritable. Writing personally might just take the edge off their tempers, if he was lucky.

Like the letter he had been forced to write last week to the Deputy Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, regretfully withdrawing the offer of a promotion due to the Head of Department's sudden decision not to take early retirement.

They were always difficult letters, the ones he wrote himself. Difficult, unpleasant, ones that he'd really prefer not to have to write at all.

And yet none of them were as difficult as this one, the one he was writing now. He'd never been so reluctant to write a letter in all his years, no matter how difficult or unpleasant those previous letters had been.

But he had never been more determined, either.

No indeed, Minster for Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt was going to write this letter to Teddy Lupin. No matter how much it pained him. No matter how many times he had to rip it up and start all over again.

Even if it took him all day.

It had all started that morning when he had arrived in his office at the Ministry to find the usual mound of papers and letters waiting for his attention, and as he did most weeks he spotted amongst them an envelope addressed to him in spidery handwriting that he recognised upon first glance.

Alastor Moody was always sending him letters. In fact Alastor Moody was always sending _everybody_ letters, letters of complaint, letters expressing anger or even simple annoyance, letters bemoaning the fact that nobody seemed to do a good job at anything anymore.

Or that nobody had _ever _done a good job at anything _ever_.

Kingsley suspected that most of these letters that found their way into various Ministry offices were either shoved in a drawer unopened, ignored, or read begrudgingly. Nobody took them at all seriously, not any more. Moody was seen out in public so rarely these days that most people seemed to think him completely out of touch with the world, a babbling old loony whose once keen mind was probably nothing but cobwebs and air.

It might well be true. After all, thinking about it Kingsley had not visited Moody in person for over a year.

Nevertheless, the Minister always read the old Auror's letters. He always did his best to make some sort of sense of them. And then he would write a short letter back, usually agreeing with whatever was wrong with the world that week, before inquiring after his fellow Order member's health. Sometimes he would add a line or two about the weather, or a recollection about their time together at the Ministry or during the War. Tonks often cropped up in these written thoughts every week or so, and he'd waste a little time tapping his quill against his desk recalling both her and Remus, a mental battle to remember happy times. Then he would think of that young boy of theirs and how he hadn't really seen him as often as he ought do.

As often has he'd promised.

Moody's letter that morning had differed significantly from those he usually sent.

It had been short, for one thing. The usual long, sprawling paragraph of grumbling, rambling text had been replaced by just two sentences:

_Nymphadora and Remus' boy was here asking questions yesterday afternoon._

_It's about time you kept your word. _

Merlin, it was surprising how much shame two short lines of text could bring raining down upon him, how much shame he felt for allowing himself to become so distracted by life that he forgot something so important.

To think, he thought as he stared down at the letter that he was midway through writing, that it took somebody like Moody, who had seemingly began to lose his grasp on the real world, to make Kingsley see that world clearly himself.

_I shall have to tell your mother,_ the Minister wrote, _when I next visit her resting place, that I am so dreadfully sorry for failing her thus far._

_My life, as you can imagine,_ _is never less than hectic and there are so many different demands on my time that keeping up with them all is never easy at all. That is not to say that either you or your mother ought forgive me for my failings. But I do at least hope that you might at least understand them. _

_But what you must first understand, Teddy, is what it is that I have failed. _

_The short answer to this, which is not at all the length of answer that you deserve, is simply this: I made a promise to your mother some months before her death, and for the past fifteen years, for one reason or another, I have failed to keep it. _

_Alastor Moody tells me that you have been to visit him and that you spoke about your parents for some while. I wonder if you might come to visit me this afternoon at the Ministry, so that we might do the same, and so that I might give you the aforementioned answer again, this time at length._

_I should add, too, that I am deeply sorry to hear of your grandmother's death. Harry tells me that you are coping admirably. I have no doubt that your parents would be proud. _

_Best Wishes,_

_Kingsley._

The Minister had done little for the rest of the morning and early afternoon after sending that letter, save for sit and wonder precisely what he was going to say.

When Harry escorted young Teddy into his office some two hours later, however, he still had no definite plan in mind. So he had busied himself for a few minutes offering the boy tea, coffee and biscuits.

"No thank you, Minister." the boy said, hands folded neatly in his lap, and Kingsley felt instantly ashamed again.

"It's Kingsley to you, Ted." he explained as he sat back down behind his desk across from his visitor.

It ought always just be Kingsley. They ought know each other that well, they would do if he had kept his word.

Except he hadn't. And now asking Teddy to visit him at the Ministry seemed foolish because it was terribly formal, like some sort of business meeting, and it was supposed to be exactly the opposite.

If he had kept his word.

Teddy offered him a rather shy smile, and Kingsley took a moment to look him up and down, searching for ghosts.

Tonks was there, he saw, in those dark, twinkling eyes, so much so that he could almost see her winking at him. And there was Remus' half-smile that, though such a slight curve of the lips could be so calming, so reassuring sat across the table from Kingsley at Grimmauld Place as Moody gave yet another grim lecture of one form or another, that it could almost block the darkness out.

And Kingsley did feel suddenly calmer.

"It's nice, I think." the Minister decided, leaning back in his chair with a smile. "Sitting here to...to talk about your parents."

Teddy's expression grew grateful at this, and Kingsley supposed nobody else had claimed such a thing. Nobody else wanted to answer any questions, nobody else wanted the pain of digging up the past, and he told Teddy so.

"But you don't mind?" the boy asked a little hesitantly, as if he feared the wizard might just change his mind, but Kingsley shook his head.

"Of course the first thing I mean to tell you is as grim as many other stories I could tell." he said, stretching his feet out in front of him to get a little more comfortable. "But in a way I look forward to telling it almost as much as I dread it. I look forward to it because your mother would be pleased, and I look forward to it because of all the wonderful thing that I might tell you afterwards..."

It had been messy, the incident in question. And he would later go on to wonder if that was what had truly sealed her fate, what had truly resigned them all to the fact that she wasn't going to make it.

Because when he'd put her to bed afterwards, she had never truly risen from it again.

Moody had been dead set against her going with him to keep watch over the Crabbe residence that night.

He'd been even more against Remus going with them too.

It had been the first Order mission that Remus and Tonks had gone on together since Bellatrix had struck Remus with that fateful curse. And it was to be their last ever mission together, too.

"I'll take good care of them." Kingsley had told the irate Moody as they had trooped out of the back door of The Burrow, ignoring the ranting and raving of the man behind them, and Tonks had shot him a rather filthy look at the suggestion that she or Remus needed looking after in the slightest.

Tonks clearly needed looking after. She was, by now, quite far along, and her burning stomach had swollen to a clear, round mass that poked out from beneath the hem of her t shirt.

Kingsley felt rather as if it were mocking him and the rest of her friends in some way.

He'd offered her his arm as they had trudged up the steep hill towards their designated look out post; the ruins of a medieval church perched atop a cliff from whose remains they could get a very clear view at the house down below, and though she had laughed at him and insisted that she was not an invalid, she was utterly breathless by the time they reached the summit.

Kingsley had absolutely no idea why Remus had consented to letting her come with them, because really it was downright foolish. But then again he'd seen how unbearably restless Tonks could grow if she had nothing useful to do; he'd always purposefully avoided her on days at the Ministry that she had been forced to sit at a desk all day long. He dreaded to think what being cooped up at Moody's house for the past week or so had done to her sanity, and as missions went this was a very safe and uneventful one. They had little to do but sit and wait for a glimpse of a Death Eater or two, in the hopes of discovering precisely what gift Voldemort had a mind to present to the giants in his attempts to persuade them to join his dark cause.

Kingsley and Remus left Tonks sat perched upon the remains of the church's western wall, and the witch kept a keen watch over their surroundings as the two wizards moved in a slow circle around the perimeter, casting protective charms and wards until they had reached their starting point. With Tonks' gaze immediately fixated upon the house below, they each sat down upon the wall with their backs to her, staring down at the pathways on either side of their hiding place.

It seemed gloriously mundane and normal, sitting there in the cool breeze as time ticked by, and though they saw nothing of interest just then, Kingsley felt as if it were the most worthwhile thing that he had done in ages.

Because it was such a relief, pretending things were normal.

They grumbled enthusiastically about Moody's latest lecture, joked about shoving one another off the cliff-like face of the hillside to their deaths, and had managed a bordering on serious discussion about the Crabbes' choice of house and whether or not they would choose to live in a place like this themselves.

By the time they had concluded that the house was much too gloomy looking to consider living in, Tonks announced that she felt ravenously hungry, and their conversations grew somewhat torturous as they dreamed up all manner of weird and wonderful foods they'd like to eat at that precise moment in time.

"Dora's eaten nothing but tomato soup for the last five days." Remus recalled, tone distinctly teasing as he gazed blankly off towards the southern road. "Breakfast, lunch, dinner..."

"I have never eaten soup for breakfast, Remus. Not in my entire life!"

"Perhaps you haven't yet...but I did get woken up at four o'clock this morning by the sound of you raiding Alastor's pantry. Perhaps you ought give me the spare room and you could sleep on the sofa from now on, that way you won't keep waking me up when you come sneaking downstairs, and you can be closer to the kitchen..."

"Oh shut up!"

"Whilst she was staying with me a few months back," Kingsley recalled, "I came back from watching Malfoy Manor at gone midnight and found her sat upon the floor in the sitting room eating a jar of marmalade with a spoon."

Tonks promptly blindly reached to land a hefty slap upon his back that was surprisingly painful, and when Remus sniggered the witch threatened:

"Don't think I'm beyond hitting you, either!"

"You can't hit me." the werewolf pointed out smugly. "That would be like cutting your nose off to spite your own face."

"But I'd do it!" Tonks insisted, daring to take her eyes off the house for a moment in order to shoot the back of his head a scowl.

"Do you relish the chance to punish me quite that much?" Remus asked, voice laced with amusement, and as she glanced down at her bare hands with a frown, his wife muttered darkly:

"No, Sweetheart. But I'd relish the chance to truly touch you a hundred times as much."

She reached to press a somewhat forlorn hand against the cloak at Remus' back, and he shifted uneasily away from her and wondered:

"Have you seen anybody yet?"

"Nobody yet." Tonks murmured, reaching into her pocket to draw out a pair of thin black woollen gloves, and as she pulled them carefully onto her hands Kingsley agreed:

"I've seen nothing."

"Perhaps Bellatrix decided to throw the _party_ at her house." Tonks suggested with a snigger, and Kingsley joked:

"I hear they have a ballroom complete with disco ball and mood lighting."

"And when the Killing Curse green lights go down they play a bit of Celestina Warbeck and have a slow dance." Tonks agreed, and Remus sucked in a deep breath and murmured:

"I don't think Celestina Warbeck is quite the thing for Dark Lords who have no concept of love."

"No," Tonks sniggered, reaching to take hold of the werewolf by the hand as Kingsley stifled a yawn into his sleeve. "I bet he's a real spoil sport and refuses to join in when Dolohov asks him to dance!"

"Can you just imagine what the Ministry must have found there? When they seized the Lestrange house during the first war..." Remus began, only for Tonks to sit abruptly upright and demand:

"Shh!"

Kingsley turned to squint down towards the house, and through the darkness he could make out a trio of dark cloaked figures making their way out of the front door.

"That's probably Rookwood on the left..." he breathed as Remus too turned round and the three of them all leant forward to try and get a better look.

"That tall one has to be Dolohov..." Remus whispered, as the tall Death Eater paused to turn and look at his companions.

The trio of Death Eaters had come to a halt and Kingsley watched as, after a brief squabble of some sort, Rookwood reached into the folds of his cloak to draw out a package of some sort.

"There it is..." Kingsley murmured, leaning forward a little, squinting to get a better look, and as she stood and took a precarious few steps forward until she was stood upon the edge of the cliff, Tonks complained:

"I can't quite make out..."

She was cut off suddenly as she lurched abruptly forward with a gasp, the rocky ground beneath her feet as she leaned having just crumbled at the edges, forcing Kingsley to fling an arm out to stop her toppling any further...

The three Order members winced in anticipation as a few fragments of the cliff edge tumbled down the steep, craggy face, landing upon the road below with a series of soft taps.

The Death Eaters paused to look round, and as they looked searchingly up towards the ruined church above them, Kingsley hissed:

"Don't. Move."

Tonks' face contorted in apprehension as the Death Eaters looked around searchingly, only for the protective charms to leave the trio up upon the cliff entirely out of view. Once the Death Eaters had turned away again, Kingsley sat back heavily with a sigh, withdrawing his arm and was just opening his mouth to mutter a relieved remark when Tonks finally dared to shift her weight in an attempt to step backwards towards the wall...

Suddenly everything seemed to happen all at once.

There came an ominous cracking of stone, and as the ground beneath her feet crumbled away into nothing, Tonks failed to suppress a shriek of alarm as she attempted to fling herself back towards the wall. Her hand missed the safety of the solid stone structure by half an inch, and for a fraction of a second Kingsley thought the witch might very well fall to her death, only for Remus' hand to shoot forward, grasping hold of her hand.

She very nearly dragged Remus over the cliff after her, he lurched forward so abruptly, but a hastily wedged foot behind the wall as the werewolf fell flat upon his stomach left Tonks dangling off the side of the cliff, her face contorted in a mixture of relief and continuing panic...

And as a far larger array of debris rained down upon the Death Eaters below, they looked up towards the commotion to spot the now exposed witch hanging precariously above them.

"I've got her!" Remus insisted as the first stunning spell came streaking up towards them, missing Tonks' shoulder by mere inches. "I've got her, Kingsley you just...just..."

Kingsley hastily drew his wand and set about raining spells down upon their attackers, causing the three Death Eaters to scatter, and no sooner had they done so, the Auror dropped to his knees and demanded:

"Tonks, give me your other hand!"

"I can't!" she cried, eyes growing steadily wide. "I...I'm slipping!"

"I've still got you." Remus assured her through gritted teeth, only for her to complain:

"No, I'm slipping! I...I can feel it!"

It was at that precise moment that they heard the distinct sound of apparation behind them, and Kingsley was forced to spring back to his feet, turning to face the now regrouped Death Eaters who had apparated just outside of the protective charms and were now running full pelt towards him.

It was, for a while, all he could do to simply hold the three of them at bay, his mind a little muddled and panicked at the thought that Tonks was quite literally dangling off the edge of a cliff behind him, and as time wore on, though he began to try and focus more on the duelling, the commotion going on behind him made his panic swell.

"Don't let go!" he heard Tonks beg frantically. "Please don't let go!"

"I've got you..."

"No!"  
>"I have, I...I just...I just need to..."<p>

At the sound of a sudden scream behind him, Kingsley jumped, and was very nearly thrown off his feet by a hex striking him in the chest.

"I've got you! It's alright, I've got you! You're not going to fall..."

"Oh...oh Merlin...oh Merlin..."

"Dora! Listen to me..."

"Don't...don't let go..."

"Where's your wand?!"

"I...I...it's not...it's not in my pocket I...I think I dropped it...bloody hell..."

"Take off your glove."

"Don't let go..."

"Dora! I can't hold on like this forever! I can't grip your hand properly! Take off your glove!"  
>"I...I can't..."<p>

"Your free hand, Dora! TAKE OFF YOUR GLOVE!"

"O...okay...okay...d...don't let go of me..."

"I won't. I promise. Hurry..."

Knocking Dolohov backwards into a nearby tree, Kingsley glanced back just in time to watch Remus give Tonks a firm yank upwards, only for her gloved hand to slip from his fingers, reaching just in time to catch hold of her bare one with both of his, grasping firmly hold of it with all his might...

And within moments, as he turned back and sent a second Death Eater leaping back to cower behind a tree, Kingsley felt a horrible sickening sensation churning in his stomach.

Because it began.

Tonks screamed, cried out, swore, moaned and positively sobbed in pain.

And as he clung desperately to her searing, withering hand, the blazing heat scalding every inch of flesh, Remus screwed his eyes firmly shut and pleaded for her forgiveness.

"I'm sorry, my darling..."

"Oh Merlin!"

"I'm so, so sorry..."

"M...make it...make it stop!"

"It'll be over soon, I promise...I...I'm so, so sorry..."  
>"KINGSLEY!" she sobbed, positively wild in desperation. "KINGSLEY HURRY!"<p>

"I can't pull you up..." Remus complained as Kingsley struck down a second Death Eater, leaving just one remaining. "I...I can't reach my wand and...and oh Merlin, Dora..."

"F...for the love of Merlin s...somebody d...do something!"

"I'm sorry..."

"KINGSLEY! P...PLEASE!"

"I'm so, so sorry..."

"By the time I'd fought the last Death Eater off and managed to drag her up onto solid ground," Kingsley recalled as Teddy gave a shudder at the thought of the scene, "your mother's hand was so utterly mangled that she was quite convinced we'd have to resort to cutting it off. She passed out within a minute, so I left your father to search the unconscious Death Eaters and sneak down to the bottom of the cliff to attempt to retrieve your mother's wand, whilst I apparated her back to Alastor's house. She didn't regain consciousness until I accidentally bumped her head against the wall whilst trying to put her to bed...

He didn't notice that she was awake for a long moment, so busy was he unlacing her boots and pulling them carefully from her feet, concentrating on not getting mud upon the sheets. But then he looked up to find her staring at him, dark eyes that so often twinkled dull and bleak as if she were staring straight through him.

"Mad-Eye says I'm going to die in this bed." the pale witch recalled, voice not much more than a whisper, slowly raising her scalded, disfigured hand up so that she could inspect it. "Can you imagine? Right here in this bed. I wonder how I sleep here sometimes, I really do..." She trailed off, letting her hand drop back down to the sheets with a wince, before offering Kingsley a small, hopeless smile.

Kingsley reached to pull the blankets up to her chin in silence, concentrating hard on tucking her in so firmly that she probably could barely breathe, let alone move.

"I left Remus behind to retrieve a thing or two." he said once he was finished, because simply staring at her in silence made him feel uncomfortable. "He should be back within the hour. Alastor's raiding his cupboards in search of bandages and burn solution. I'm due at Bill's to brief Hagrid on what we saw..."

"Merlin," Tonks murmured, sighing heavily. "You're not going to leave me lying here at Mad-Eye's mercy, are you? I might not last an hour before Remus can come and rescue me..."

"Sorry," he said, offering her an apologetic smile, tugging absentmindedly at the blankets as her eyes drifted shut in a distinctly resigned fashion.

"Oh well, we all have to die at some point I suppose." she joked, and though he laughed, he reached to lay a hand upon her shoulder.

"Tonks?"

"Hm?"

"Enough of all this...all this talk of _dying_. It doesn't suit you."

She gave a weak chuckle and wondered:

"What suits me, then? Because sometimes I think I don't have a clue..."

"You know precisely what suits you." Kingsley reasoned, sinking down to perch upon the edge of the bed, hand still upon her shoulder. "That's what makes you _you_, Tonks. You're always so sure of yourself. It's very irritating."

She smiled somewhat vaguely and for a long moment there was silence. Kingsley was just about to rise back to his feet and take his leave, when she reached to pull her good hand free from the blankets, fingers reaching to curl firmly around his arm.

"Will you...will you tell him about how irritating I was?" she whispered. "Will you tell him what...what suited me?"

"Who, Tonks?" Kingsley asked, forced to lean a little closer to hear her mumbling.

"My son." she said, as if it were all terribly obvious. "Do you think you'll tell him what I was like, when I'm gone?"

He shifted uncomfortably at such a question, only for her grip upon him to tighten, her eyes snapping open to fix him with a stare.

"Keep an eye on him, won't you? Remus won't...won't find it easy. Raising him on his own. He won't want to...won't want to talk about me often, it'll...it'll hurt too much. But you have to talk about me, Kingsley. You have to tell my son about me. Tell him...tell him all sorts of stories! Nice ones. Not about all of this. Don't tell him about all of these horrible things, tell him about...about fun things like the time I spiked your coffee during that meeting at work and your face turned bright purple, or about that time we went for a drink at the Three Broomsticks for your birthday and I stood on the table and sung you Happy Birthday! Tell him good stuff...tell him about my first...my first day at work or...or the first time I made an arrest. Tell him about...about all the good things, won't you? Talk about me. Don't let him...don't let him forget about me..."

"He couldn't forget about you, Tonks." Kingsley assured her, grip upon her shoulder tightening comfortingly. "Nobody would ever let that happen, you're his mother."

"Do you promise?" she asked, gaze so piercing that he very nearly leant away from her.

"Of course! Of course I will. If you aren't there, Tonks, I'll tell him all sorts of things! I'll tell him all about you! Every little thing I can remember! I won't shut up about you, it'll be infuriating and he'll be quite sick of the sound of your name by the time he comes of age!"  
>"Really?"<p>

"Really!"

"And will you tell him how much I love him?"

"Of course I will. We all will, I'm sure..."

"But I didn't." Kingsley admitted, sounding rather ashamed as Teddy sat, gaze fixated upon his lap, an odd mixture of despair and wonder upon his face. "And Merlin knows, I'm ashamed of it. But I like to think your mother would forgive me for it. Because I knew from the first time I ever met Nymphadora Tonks that that was the sort of person she was. And that's where I should probably start making up for things, Teddy. By telling you about what a forgiving person she was, that first time I ever met her..."


	9. Deceiving Appearances

_Note: Written this because I've deemed myself too unwell to do anything truly worthwhile! I hope you enjoy it!_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**9: Deceiving Appearances**

It could take years, getting to know new recruits at Auror Headquarters.

For one thing, everybody was always so _busy_. Busy writing up reports, busy planning raids, busy scouring Ministry records, busy tracking down the next person on the Ministry's never ending wanted list. It could take a month's worth of coffee breaks to find out where a colleague lived, if they were married or what they liked to do on their rare days off.

And for another thing, Kingsley didn't really see the point of getting to know anybody. Not for the first year at the very least.

It was tough, Auror training. Not something to be undertaken by the weak, faint hearted, lazy or sluggish. In Kingsley's experience most Auror cadets could be labelled with at least one of these fatal flaws and only a small handful of the new faces who appeared in the department's midst ever completed training and qualified as Aurors. There had been so many names and faces over the years, and Kingsley couldn't confess to remembering more than a few of them.

But Nymphadora Tonks had been entirely different.

Within a week of her arrival everybody in the Auror Department had known who she was.

Because she had an..._unusual_ name, to put it politely, even for a witch. And because she looked like nobody else anybody had ever set eyes upon before, with her neon coloured hair and equally blinding clothes that made Dawlish comment that he hoped she either dropped out of training or miraculously qualified early, that way she'd be either gone or forced to wear Auror robes like everybody else and Dawlish wouldn't get a headache each morning merely from the sight of her.

And because she was related to a whole bunch of people the Aurors had thrown into Azkaban for one dark deed or another. Which was, of course, entirely irrelevant. But even Aurors liked to find curiosities to mindlessly chatter about in their lunch breaks.

And yet it had not been her name, appearance or even her relations that had made Tonks stick in Kingsley's mind, or made him bother to befriend her before he was even sure she would qualify.

That had all been down to the first time he had ever happened across her, or to put it more accurately: _bumped into her_.

It always made him laugh, looking back on it, that she hadn't been the one to bump into him, after all she was supposedly the notoriously clumsy one and he was far more careful.

But as it happened, upon their first meeting, Kingsley and Tonks had seemingly changed roles.

"We'd just raided a house just outside of Birmingham the previous evening," the Minister told Teddy, already smiling at the memory as the boy too smiled in anticipation. "And whilst there we had recovered a whole load of suspicious looking bottles and vials...Merlin knows what was in them! But that morning I volunteered to load it all up onto a trolley and drop it off downstairs to be looked at by the Magical Substances Regulatory Authority, because of course the Auror Department don't really concern themselves with dodgy potions and that sort of thing. I did it to get out of talking to Alastor...he was in a bad mood about something or other, so I decided to make myself scarce..."

As he wandered slowly down the corridor towards the lift, feeling rather pleased with himself for avoiding what would no doubt have been a Moody Rant of epic proportions, Kingsley found that in his determination to take his time over the simple task that he had volunteered for, his pace had grown so slow that the heavy trolley in front of him had slowed to a near halt. The Auror gave the trolley a firm push, wincing a little at the precarious rattling of the hastily stacked boxes of bottles whose position upon the trolley was precarious to say the least. He ought have been a bit more careful stacking them, truth be told, but he had been in too much of a hurry to get out of the office. He had heard Moody's voice drifting across the office and judging from how irate and loud it had sounded, Kingsley had estimated that the grizzled old Auror had been in an utterly foul mood and only a couple of cubicles away. Time had been running out!

He frowned down at the various bottles of strange looking substances and wondered vaguely if any of them looked familiar.

That greenish one there didn't. Neither did the one next to it, in fact that one looked revoltingly as if somebody had vomited in a bottle and then stuck a cork in the top for safe keeping...

The trolley had slowed to a crawl again, and as he moved on to gazing at the next potion which was a rather interesting shade of orange, Kingsley heard the sound of the lift doors sliding open just head of him.

He gave the trolley a firm push, preparing to make a mad dash for the lift before the doors slid shut again, and was just dragging his gaze away from the rattling boxes of potions to judge how far he had to run when his progress came to a sudden jolted halt at the appearance of a figure in his path.

Kingsley barely caught sight of a shock of pink hair before the trolley collided violently with it's victim, sending her crashing backwards towards the marble floor with a small shout of alarm. The top few boxes were jolted sideways and before he had time to blink, there came an almighty crash as boxes and potion bottles tumbled to the floor in a shower of smashing glass and leaking liquid.

"Merlin, I...I'm so sorry!" Kingsley exclaimed, launching himself around the trolley to inspect the damage, and that was the first time he ever truly set eyes upon her.

"I suppose I noticed her hair first." the Minister recalled, frowning a little in consideration. "Because of course I hadn't ever really come across anybody with bright pink hair before...which is quite funny actually because it wasn't really that bright...not for your mother, anyway. She'd toned it down several shades to what she considered dark...that's probably only one step removed from fluorescent as far you or I or any normal person is concerned..."

"What did you notice second?" Teddy asked with a grin, and Kingsley puffed his cheeks in amusement and recalled:

"That would've been the large splash of potion that was busy burning a sizeable hole through her jumper..."

At the sight of the faintly smoking liquid steadily disintegrating the material, the already flustered Kingsley came over feeling a little panicked.

"Here!" he cried, throwing himself down onto his knees at the young witch's side. "Quickly! You'd better...here, just..." Without thinking he reached to first grab hold of the pale, silvery coloured robes that she was wearing, hastily yanking them down off her shoulders, causing her to shout:

"What the bloody hell are you doing?!"

"Sorry, sorry! It's just...your jumper...!"

As she scrambled rather clumsily in an attempt to look down at herself, the witch's eyes widened at the sight of the steadily growing hole in her attire and muttered:

"Oh shit!"  
>"I'm so sorry!" Kingsley muttered again, grabbing her by the elbow and hauling her up into a sitting position. "I wasn't looking and...just...you'd better take it off before it...before it burns you!"<p>

Shrugging her arms free from the robes, the young witch hastily reached to grab the hem of her jumper, yanking it up over her head.

For a split second Kingsley winced at the thought that he might cause further embarrassment for the pair of them by being confronted by this unfortunate stranger sprawled upon the floor in nothing but skinny jeans and a bra, only to feel immense relief to discover that she appeared to be wearing a vest top underneath.

Tossing the ruined jumper to one side, the witch reached to brush a hand across the vest in inspection, and upon finding the undergarment unscathed she let out a small sigh of relief.

"Bloody hell..." she breathed, looking up to eye the chaos of smashed bottles and boxes around her, and then she sighed again, reaching to rub a hand across her eyes.

"I should really have been looking where I was going." Kingsley observed regretfully as he shuffled back to get a better look at her. "Are you alright? That was quite a tumble, you're not hurt, are you?"

"Oh, I'll live!" she decided, removing the hand from her eyes so that she could wave it dismissively at him, and then she held it out to him, arching an eyebrow as she greeted: "Hi, by the way!"

"Hello..." he consented to mumbling, taking her hand to shake, and he felt a little reassured by her firm grip and supplied: "My name is Kingsley Shacklebolt, I'm with the Aurors."

"Tonks." she informed him in return, and as she let go of his hand and reached to slip her arms back into her discarded robes she added: "Just Tonks. And I suppose I'm _with the Aurors_ too, now. In a manner of speaking."

"You're here for training?" he guessed, carefully setting about getting to his feet, trying his best to stay clear of any fragments of glass upon the floor, and as he stood back he watched her gaze down at her now rather dishevelled attire with a deep frown.  
>"Yes..." Tonks mumbled rather despairingly. "It's...it's my first day...I was just...they said I should report to the Head of Aurors' office..." she trailed off, face contorting as she observed: "Oh bloody hell, look at the state of me! What's...what's he going to think?!"<p>

Kingsley eyed her guiltily.

She did look...well..._a mess_.

Her robes, which from the look of them had probably been brand new, had grown crumbled and a rather ugly blue stein had seeped into the fabric by her elbow. The nasty vomit-esque potion appeared to have disintegrated a large chunk out of the hem, and her vest was by no means the smart garment that the newly ruined striped jumper had been.

"I..." Kingsley began, wondering precisely what he meant to say. He'd replace the clothes? He'd fetch her some unspoilt ones from...Merlin knew where? He was dreadfully sorry? He'd go and admit to the Head of Aurors precisely what had just happened?

Tonks didn't wait to find out.

"It's alright," she told him kindly. "It's not your fault, it was an accident...I um...I'll just have to...um..." she looked to be at something of a loss at precisely what she would do, only for both of them to become distracted by the sound of brisk footsteps echoing up the corridor.

Kingsley turned around just in time to see Head of Aurors Rufus Scrimgeour striding his way up the corridor, and as the wizard came to an abrupt halt to eye the chaos before him, Kingsley felt instantly wretched.

"What in Merlin's name do you call this, Shacklebolt?!" the Head of Aurors inquired sourly, and Kingsley wondered if perhaps Moody's poor mood that morning was in some way contagious.

"It's nothing, it was an accident..." Kingsley murmured, daring a backwards glance to spot the look of mortification that had materialised upon Tonks' face at Scrimgeour's presence.

"Well stop standing around dawdling and send for Magical Maintenance to clear it up!" Scrimgeour snapped impatiently, smashed glass crunching under his boots as he took a few steps forward. "I've told Dawlish you're to go with him this morning! It's a two-man job and I won't have it botched, d'you here?! It's too important to..." he paused mid-sentence as his eyes came to rest upon the sprawled witch upon the floor, and as her face blossomed with colour almost as bright as her hair, the Head of Aurors gave a huff and inquired: "And who precisely might you be?"

With as much dignity as she could muster, which probably wasn't a whole lot if truth be told, Tonks straightened up a little and, giving her head a small toss informed her new employer:

"Nymphadora Tonks, Mr. Scrimgeour."

Scrimgeour gave another huff, reaching to shove his hands deep into the pockets of his robes.

"Ah yes. _Nymphadora Tonks_," he grunted, face contorting irritably. "What a mouthful..."

"It's character building, Mr. Scrimgeour." Tonks informed him, entirely unconcerned by his apparent dislike of her.

Scrimgeour didn't appear to be amused.

"I don't like _characters_ in my department, Miss Tonks." he informed her icily. "The Aurors are a single, dedicated, uniformed and unified force!"

Despite her embarrassment, Tonks appeared to find this rather amusing.

"Oh I shouldn't worry about that, Mr. Scrimgeour." she assured him with a bright smile. "I think you'll find I can be as dull and uniformed as anybody...quite literally..."

Kingsley wasn't entirely sure what she meant by this, but perhaps Scrimgeour knew something about her that he didn't, for he gave an abrupt huff of amusement, only for it to vanish within a second as he demanded:

"Well?! Are you going to lie around down there all day?!" As Tonks hastily scrambled to her feet the Head of Aurors shook his head disapprovingly at the state of her and, glancing back at Kingsley muttered: "I don't know where we find these people, Shacklebolt, I really don't..." And with that he set off down the corridor again towards the lift.

As she hastily attempted to straighten her robes, Tonks spun around to stare after him, calling:

"They told me to report straight to you, Mr Scrimgeour!"

The Head of Aurors paused halfway down the corridor, and after a moment he turned on his heel and strode back towards them, coming to a halt so close to Tonks that they were toe to toe.

Kingsley found himself holding his breath a little and the Head of Aurors stared down his nose at this dishevelled, characterful, colourful new addition to his staff with a deep frown upon his face, his eyes piercing as if attempting to make her shuffle backwards a step.

Tonks didn't move a muscle.

Something in Scrimgeour's jaw twitched a little, a mixture of irritation and curiosity before he looked abruptly past her to Kingsley and instructed:

"Hand her over to Moody." And with that he gave a chuckle, turning on his heel and stomping off towards the lift, commenting: "He'll eat her for breakfast!"

Once Scrimgeour had disappeared into the lift and the doors had slid shut behind him, Tonks reached to bury her hands in her face with a heavy sigh.

"Oh bloody hell..." Kingsley heard her mutter, her stoicism apparently beginning to shatter, and the Auror admitted:

"You probably shouldn't have answered him back. Keep your mouth shut next time, it's easier that way..."

"Next time?!" she laughed, voice high in panic as her hands dropped back down to her sides. "You reckon there'll be a next time? I'm...I'm completely screwed!"

"I'm really sorry about all of this." Kingsley said, and though he was losing count of how many times he had apologised to her he felt as if any number of times would never really be enough, because he knew full well that first impressions meant a lot in a place like this.

"It's really not your fault." she insisted, reaching to run a hand over her hair in an attempt to flatten it. "Honestly, these things happen, don't they? So...don't worry about it! I'd probably have screwed it all up on my own given half a chance..."

"Of course I knew right there and then that she wouldn't screw anything up at all." the Minister told Teddy with a vague smile.

"How did you know that?" Teddy asked, only to glance over his shoulder at the sound of the office door being opened. A witch carrying a large stack of papers hurried into the room, hastily depositing the papers onto the Minister's desk before making a hasty exit. Kingsley all but ignored her, save for a brief glance and a nod as he explained:

"In those days Scrimgeour sent a recruit to see Alastor on their first day it was for one of two reasons. Usually it meant he'd decided they were a waste of space and he wanted rid of them...in which case sending them to spend an hour or two to be grilled and pretty much interrogated by Alastor would probably make them crack, leave there and then and never come back..."

"That's cruel."

"Or, once in a blue moon it meant Scrimgeour was impressed by somebody and sending them to Alastor made sure they'd get the best start to their career, teach the finest with the finest! And that was the case with your mother, I've no doubt about it. She made a good impression with the Head of Aurors that morning, even if she didn't realise it herself..."

"He likes you, I think." Kingsley said as he reached to retrieve a square of pink memo paper and a pencil from his pocket. At the look of disbelief upon Tonks' face, he insisted: "It's true, he does. I can tell."

"How?" she wondered, wandering after him and gingerly picking her jumper up from the floor as he went to use the nearest wall to lean against, scribbling a note to send off to Magical Maintenance.

"He might not like people answering him back, but he likes anybody who's sharp enough to do so." he explained as he wrote, frowning a little to make his writing legible.

"About my name? That wasn't sharp, that's just what my dad tells me when..."

"And most importantly you've got guts. You're not scared of him..."

"Are you kidding? He's bloody terrifying..."

"...or if you are, you don't show it. Which is, in practice, the same thing." Scribbling finished with a vague apology for the trouble he had caused, Kingsley turned back to face her with a grin. "We're all nervous at first, Tonks." he assured her, raising an eyebrow as he added: "Especially when some clumsy oath like me shows up and makes a mess of our first morning! But you keep that chin of yours up and your wits about you and not even the likes of Mad-Eye Moody is going to ruin your chances here." Tossing the paper into the air, causing it to fold itself into a little paper aeroplane that shot off up the corridor, he told her: "Talking of Alastor, I'd better take you to him. I...I suppose you've...you've heard of him, haven't you?"

"Of course I have."

"Right...well...whatever you've heard, all the crazy stories and all of that...?"

"Mm?"

"Just so you know, they're all true. Every single one of them. "

"Oh...right..."

As he led her up the corridor, pausing at the entrance to Auror Headquarters, Kingsley cast one last regretful look round at her and yet again told her:

"I really am sorry, Tonks. I um...I tell you what, I'll come and check up on you in a couple of hours when I get back...bring you a cup of coffee, make sure Mad-Eye isn't um..."

"Eating me for breakfast?"

"Exactly. He won't though, I'm sure."

And with that Tonks gave an exaggerated wink, leaning to elbow the Auror gently in the side as she suggested:

"You never know, Kingsley, maybe it'll be the other way around!" And with that she turned, took a deep, calming breath, before stepping through the doorway.

And at her unfathomable friendliness towards him and her apparently iron-clad will, Kingsley stepped in after her, spotting Moody across the room, ranting at Savage for Merlin knew what...

The Auror glanced at the witch beside him thoughtfully, cracking a smile with the thought that if anybody in this place might turn out to be a match for Alastor Moody, it was probably going to be Nymphadora Tonks...

"And she was!" the Minister chuckled, shaking his head at the memory. "Merlin, nobody could speak to Alastor like she did! Nobody dared...tease him or...or laugh at him, question him...she was quite something, your mother, she really was! And Merlin only knows how she managed it because she didn't have the best start with him, either. Thanks to my mishap Alastor took one look at her and said: _And what've you come as, then?! This is the bloody Auror Department, girl, not the Experimental bloody Charms Unit! What sort of bloody half-arsed operation d'you think we're running here?!_ Poor girl, half the office turned to stare at her, she just stood there...didn't know what to say, of course. Fresh out of Hogwarts, she was, barely eighteen years old! I'd seen witches twice her age reduced to tears at less! Savage, the moron, he started laughing and Alastor snapped at him to be quiet, which gave your mother a second to compose herself. She folded her arms across her chest and said...Merlin the guts of the girl! She said: _Well I'm pretty sure it isn't a fashion show, Mr. Moody, although perhaps I might be wrong. After all first appearances can be deceiving, don't you think?_"

Teddy reached to press a hand to his mouth as he laughed, and the Minister didn't bother to try and smother his amusement, he threw back his head and positively roared with laughter as he exclaimed:

"Goodness, Teddy! The look on Alastor's face! I wanted to howl with laughter! I wanted to clap her, for Merlin's sake! And he was impressed, like Scrimgeour was, I know it, but he was furious all the same! How dare she speak to him like that! In front of the entire office! Who did she think she was?! I wouldn't have said it to him, I wouldn't say it to him even now, for Merlin's sake! But there was your mother, only out of Hogwarts a few months, her first day in her first job, standing in front of the greatest Auror of our time, dressed in ragged looking robes and looking a total mess...and she had the nerve to tell him, to tell the great Alastor Moody: _appearances can be deceiving_! Ha! He gave her hell! Everybody did, for weeks and weeks! And it was all down to me and that bloody trolley! I might very well have ruined her career before it even started if she hadn't kept her nerve...she nearly didn't, you know. She nearly dropped out several times...told me she fancied running away and joining a muggle circus! All thanks to me! And you know, Teddy, she never resented me for it, not even for a second. I bought her that coffee, like I said I would, as a feeble apology. But she bought me a coffee the next day in return, as if I couldn't attempt to apologise at all! And that was why I took notice of your mother, Teddy. Because she was so forgiving. And strong. And so full of heart. And she remained that way until the day she died. She'd be that way now if she were still with us, she'd forgive me for neglecting my promise. She'd even forgive your father for the distance between the two of you, mark my words!" The Minister slumped back in his chair then, sighing heavily as he fixed the boy opposite him with a stare, adding: "She'd hope you can forgive him too."

Teddy swallowed the large lump that had formed in his throat.

"Do you...do you know where my father is?" he asked, leaning eagerly forward in his chair. "Do you ever hear from him or...do you think he's still alive?"

Kingsley frowned, reaching to pass a wary hand across his brow before he confessed:

"It is...difficult to...to know for certain..."

"You've not heard from him, then?"

"I have not, no. Not for many, many years..."

"When did you last see him or...or hear from him?"

"He was at the Battle of Hogwarts." Kingsley recalled rather reluctantly as if the memory pained him. "He disappeared for a while, when your mother died, stopped turning up to Order meetings...none of us knew where he had gone. We feared the worst, thought he was dead. But he showed up at Hogwarts that night just like the rest of us! He came to keep watch over the south western battlements with me...just appeared at my elbow out of the blue! He looked dreadfully sickly, I can tell you...for a split second I didn't recognise him!"

"What did you say to him?"

"I didn't quite know what to say, truth be told."

"What did he say to you?"

Kingsley simply shook his head.

"Very little...said Moody had told him I could use a second wand and that he'd gladly die beside me if it gave Harry a fighting chance. I told him it would be an honour, and then we stood in silence...waiting..."

"He didn't mention me? Or Mum?"

"Not that I can recall."

"And then Voldemort's army attacked?"

"Yes...there wasn't much time for talk after that. We didn't manage to stick together for all that long...we took down a giant that was attempting to bring the wall down, drew a bit too much attention to ourselves and before I knew it there were swarms of Death Eaters all over the place...we held them off for as long as we could, but before long we lost one another in the corridors. That was the last I saw of him."

Teddy frowned deeply.

"D'you suppose he...he might've died fighting?"

"Perhaps," Kingsley mused, shifting a little in his seat. "Nobody remembers seeing him in the Great Hall afterwards, but we never found a body, either."

"But nobody's ever seen or heard from him since the Battle of Hogwarts?" Teddy attempted to clarify, and the Minister for Magic gave a shrug.

"I certainly haven't, and I suspect if anybody else had I would have come to hear of it."

At that moment there came a knock upon the door, and Teddy twisted round in his seat again to see the witch who had appeared earlier peering round the door.

"Minister? They're ready to begin." she explained, and Kingsley rose to his feet, murmuring:

"Thank you, Jean. Could you fetch Mr. Potter for me?"

As the witch gave a short nod and slipped back out into the corridor, Kingsley turned to offer Teddy a smile.

"Will you be visiting your mother's resting place tomorrow at all?" he wondered. "For her birthday? I expect your grandmother usually took you, did she?"

"No..." Teddy mumbled rather dejectedly, gaze dropping to his shoes. "We never went to the grave on Mum's birthday...Gran didn't like to...she found it too upsetting..."

"Yes...yes I imagine it would have." the Minister observed sadly as the office door opened again as Harry stepped inside. "Well perhaps Harry might take you this year."

"I'd like that." Teddy said, rising slowly from his chair, and the Minister offered him a broad smile and requested:

"If you do go for a visit, tell your mother how very sorry I am. And that I'll make it up to her from now on."

And as he reached to straighten his coat, Teddy smiled too and murmured:

"I'm sure she will forgive you."


	10. Graveside Visit

_Note: Dedicated to **FireLily25**, for such wonderful and detailed reviews which have made me smile recently, despite my ills and hideous workload. Which is worse than ever, as it happens. So much so that I decided to abandon it for the evening and finish writing this..._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**10: Graveside Visit**

There was a fierce wind blowing that morning as Teddy and Harry made their way slowly through the churchyard gates and up the pathway amongst the gravestones, gravel crunching under their feet.

"I do this every year." Harry recalled, hands shoved deep into his pockets against the chill. "Usually Ginny and I, we leave the kids with Molly and Arthur and come together. She was dead fond of your mum, Ginny was...she cries! Every year, even after all this time, I bring her here with me and Ginny just...cries..." The Head of Aurors sighed heavily, shaking his head as he recalled: "It was such a shock, when we found out. We weren't expecting it at all...nobody told us, back then. Nobody told us Tonks was that sick. Of course Ginny was stuck at Hogwarts and she didn't hear much news from anybody...the odd letter smuggled in by Aberforth, I suppose. And that's how she found out. Molly wrote one day and mentioned that Tonks was feeling ill...under the weather, she said, nothing more. So Ginny wrote to Tonks to cheer her up...sent her a Get Well Soon Card or something..."

"Did Mum write back?"

"Oh yes..."

"What did she say?"

"I don't know...something cheery and dismissive...cracked a joke or two...typical Tonks, really. And the next thing Gin knows...she's dead!"

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. Molly wrote again...awful letter, Ginny says she cried for ages, hid herself in the Room of Requirement and skipped lunch and dinner..."

"That must've been awful."

"Yeah, not the best way to find out. But at least she did find out. I didn't know your mum was gone for weeks! Because of course nobody knew where Ron, Hermione and I were, not until we showed up at Shell Cottage that time...it didn't...didn't quite seem real to me, then. Because of course we'd just lost Dobby..."

"Do you theenk we should tell 'im?" he'd heard Fleur whispering from the kitchen as he sat sprawled in an armchair, gazing blankly up at the ceiling. "So soon after the elf?"

"Maybe we should tell him." Bill suggested worriedly. "I mean...perhaps he...he might've heard from...you know...and we need to know, don't we? Everybody's half mad looking for him..."

"But Bill, 'e is in no state! Look at 'im in there!"

Harry squeezed his eyes shut.

He wasn't sure he could possibly care about anything they could tell him just then. He didn't think he could feel more awful than he already did. Any worse...any more empty...

And yet...

"What is it?!" he called, forcing his eyes open and swallow the large lump in his throat. "What don't I know?!"

There was a long pause, as if Bill and Fleur were considering whether or not to respond, before the two of them came almost tip-toeing into the sitting room, Bill reaching to rake a hand through his hair.

"We were just wondering," he said after eying Harry in consideration for a long moment. "The Order's been wondering, that is...if...well..."

"If what?" Harry asked, failing not to sound rather defensive. He couldn't seem to help it, he was too weary for their constant questions, especially when there was so much he could not admit to them.

But then Fleur said:

"We were wondering if you 'ad 'eard from Remus at all?"

Harry felt his chest constrict anxiously.

"What?" he said, hurriedly sitting a little straighter in his chair. "Why? Why should I...why don't you...he's...he's with Tonks, isn't he? They're at...at her parents' house or...or something, aren't they?"

"Then you've not heard from him?"

"Of course not...I've not heard from him or Tonks or...or anybody! Why? Don't you know where he is? Is he...is..." he had to pause to suck in a deep, steadying breath in order to ask: "Is Remus _missing_?"

Bill and Fleur exchanged a look.

And then Fleur promptly turned away, her face contorting miserably as she snapped:

"I told you! I told you, didn't I?! 'E doesn't know anything! 'E has no idea...'e doesn't even know about the baby! Oh Bill...!"

"What baby?" Harry asked, struggling to order the sudden confused mix of thoughts in his head, only to manage to slot a few of them together, leading him to conclude... "Wait...is Tonks...are they having a baby?!"

And Bill frowned deeply and said, with an air much too somber for such an announcement:

"They've had a baby. A little boy...Teddy. Teddy Remus Lupin..."

Harry opened his mouth to make some sort of happy exclamation, but for some reason he couldn't quite manage it, there was something...wrong...

Very wrong...

"We should get Ron and Hermione," Bill pointed out, "That way you can all...all hear about it together..."

But Harry didn't feel as if he could wait. Not even when Ron and Hermione were only upstairs...

"Just tell me." he insisted, leaning anxiously forward in his chair. "Tell me what's going on..."

Bill sighed heavily, stepping to drop down into the seat opposite him and folding his hands carefully in his lap. He stared down at them for a long moment, fidgeting before explaining:

"Tonks was...was very ill, Harry..."

"Was?" Harry repeated, feeling utterly bemused. "But now she's better? What's the..."

"Remus got injured earlier in the year," Bill said, only bemusing Harry further for this seemed somewhat irrelevant, unconnected. "Bellatrix got him something rotten...he should have died..."

"But he didn't." Harry pointed out impatiently, only for Bill to run a weary hand through his hair again.

"It's...complicated, Harry." the eldest Weasley sibling said, trying to explain yet again. "Tonks...Tonks saved Remus' life using...a branch of ancient magic called Blood Magic."

"What's Blood Magic?" Harry asked, heart beginning to hammer in his chest. He had never heard of such a thing before, but he couldn't help but not like the sound of Blood Magic. Nothing he had ever come across in the magical world that had anything to do with blood ever seemed to be good...

"Put simply, Blood Magic saps the life from one person and...and gifts it to another." Bill explained a little stiffly, and Harry felt himself give an involuntary little shudder. "It's very powerful and...and dark magic. It...it saved Remus' life but...but left a curse. Remus couldn't...couldn't touch Tonks without sapping more life from her..."

"It was all utterly alien to me," Harry recalled as he and Teddy turned off the path and onto the grass, careful not to step on a bouquet of flowers that had been left to rest against a headstone. "But I just knew it was awful...and Bill kept...kept speaking in the past tense...and then when he said your mum had fallen pregnant I just...I knew what was coming, I don't know how but I just knew it..."

"She's...gone, Harry. She's...dead."

Harry simply stared.

"Mad-Eye's left the baby with Andromeda."

He felt...utterly numb...

"Remus...he...well...we don't know where he is, he...he panicked, I suppose...couldn't cope..."

He felt worse. How could he feel worse? After Dobby he'd thought it impossible...

"We're all worried about him, it doesn't do to just disappear in times like this, anything could happened to him..."

Completely and utterly...numb...

"That's...that's why we wondered if...if you had heard from him."

The numbness stung.

"Harry? There's...there's something else..."

It was all consuming.

"Remus came to a Order meeting a month or so ago. He said he and Tonks had been talking..."

He felt as if he had just plunged into the icy depths of the lake after the Sword of Gryffindor all over again.

"...about the baby. About choosing godparents, I mean."

It just...stung.

"And they said they wanted it to be you, Harry."

It throbbed.

"That's what Remus and Tonks wanted. They wanted you to be Teddy's godfather. You've got a godson, Harry."

It hurt like Hell.

The graveyard was eerily quiet as they slipped past the last gravestone to rejoin the gravel pathway, so much so that Teddy almost jumped to catch sight of a silent figure sat down upon a damp wooden bench some short distance away. The figure, swathed in a heavy taupe coloured great coat, collar turned up and head ducked against the wind, made for a somewhat grim observer as Harry and Teddy passed by, and Teddy turned to focus upon the large bouquet of multicoloured flowers that he held in his hands, the vivid petals somewhat comforting amongst the grey confides of the churchyard.

His mother's grave, tucked away up against the low churchyard wall, escaped Teddy's notice for a moment as he and Harry came to a halt before it, for instead the boy's gaze was drawn to the headstone to the left.

"They've done it, then." he observed a little numbly, gazing at the fresh letters carved into the pale marble, spelling out his grandmother's name underneath that of his grandfather. "They're together now, Gran and Grandad."

"All three of them, I expect." Harry said, and at this Teddy's gaze shifted to look down at his mother's own grave.

He blinked.

A large bunch of striking pink roses had been carefully arranged to rest against the headstone, and as Teddy dropped down to inspect them he wondered:

"Who d'you suppose left these here?"

"Could be anybody, Ted." Harry mused, leaning to set his own bunch of pale pink lilies down at the roses' side. "Ron and Hermione, maybe? Molly and Arthur, Bill and Fluer, or maybe Kingsley got up at the crack of dawn and popped over here! Or Ginny might've come, if she knew I was come with you this year...Merlin knows, Teddy. There are a whole lot of us who loved and miss your mum. It's easy to miss her, you know. Even for me, and let's face it I didn't see her all that often..."

He'd been keen to keep his distance from every familiar face that evening, despite having been starved of company all summer.

Because he wasn't finished feeling angry at having been left in the dark by them all, not even if Dumbledore was so certain it had been for the best.

Part of him wanted to sit down in the kitchen with them all, talk to Sirius for the first time in ages, properly, face to face. Or talk to Remus because it had been even longer...

But they were all so pleased to see him, glad that he had made it to Grimmauld Place safely that he didn't want to spoil it for them by being in a bad mood. He'd been keeping up appearances for a week now, but he couldn't quite stand it anymore. So he'd mumbled some sort of an excuse and gone for a wander.

Despite having been there for some while, Harry felt rather as if he were exploring the grim interior of Grimmauld Place for the first time as he made his way up a staircase towards the drawing room, careful not to wake the sleeping portrait of Sirius' mother in the hallway below. He felt glad to slip through the door atop the stairs, and turned to shut it behind him with a small sigh of relief, only to jump when a voice behind him called:

"Wotcher, Harry."

He turned to find Tonks sat in an armchair by the fire, her back to him as she peered at herself in a small handheld mirror, apparently spying his reflection.

Harry rather wanted to turn around and walk back out again, but supposed it would be rather rude. Forced to share his place of refuge, he wandered forward to sit down upon the moth eaten sofa opposite her, murmuring:

"Hi Tonks."

As she paused in her squinting to offer him a bright smile, he spotted the thin yet lengthy gash upon her cheek that she had been examining, and murmured:  
>"Ouch."<p>

Tonks gave a soft huff of amusement, reaching to jab a finger into a pot of gloopy looking cream that she had balance precariously upon her knee.

"Sirius tells me you fancy being an Auror." she told him as she smeared the cream generously over the wound.

"Yeah, I do." Harry agreed, and the Auror offered him an exaggerated wink and told him:

"You'd best not like your face looking pretty like that, then. We all end up looking like Mad-Eye if we live long enough!" Frowning a little as she paused to rub the last of the cream into her cheek, she mused: "Some of us would rather die, mind you. Take Kingsley, for example, he's a right pretty boy! Have you seen his head recently? I reckon he's started to polish it..."

And despite his mood, Harry found himself sniggering.

"I don't suppose Remus is still downstairs, is he?" Tonks asked, as if she hadn't uttered anything amusing in the slightest, and Harry had to cough to halt his laughter before recalling:

"Yeah, he's helping Molly and Ginny with the dinner." Feeling quite cheered by her presence Harry found himself asking hopefully: "Are you staying to eat with us, Tonks?"

And as she reached to flick the mirror back open to peer at her reflection again, Tonks mused:

"D'you know, I think I might..."

"Every time I saw her," Harry recalled as he gazed down at the gravestone, "life had always taken some sort of turn for the worst, things were always more and more grim. But she was nearly always bright and cheery...she had her moments, I suppose, but overall I usually felt like...like the War never got her down. Like somehow she'd always be smiling...she'd find a way to look at that awful world of ours...and she'd laugh at it."

And the thought made Teddy smile as he reached to set his bunch of flowers down upon the grave.

Indeed, the thought of his mother's laughter made him smile on his visit with Harry the following year.

And the year after that.

And yet the following year, when eighteen year old Teddy Lupin went with his godfather to lay flowers upon his mother's grave, such thoughts did not make him smile.

Indeed, that year Teddy's thoughts were barely of his mother at all.

Because quite suddenly they became preoccupied by somebody else entirely...


	11. You Are Not Alone

_Note: I think I may have screwed up the tenses a little bit here, so apologies for that! I'm in the middle of various deadlines for University, so this only really got written thanks to Trixie pestering me. Consequently it is rushed and probably not perfect! Still...I hope somebody likes it! :-) _

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**11: You Are Not Alone**

It was funny really, Teddy Lupin mused as he gazed down at his mother's bare grave, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, how one could only notice something was always there once it was gone.

"No roses." he observed as his godfather stooped to set a bunch of vivid daffodils down against the headstone.

"Apparently not." Harry agreed a moment later as he straightened up, only to turn to look over his shoulder when Teddy told him:

"No man, either."

"What man, Ted?"

"The man on the bench over there." Teddy said, turning to point at the bench in question. "He's always sitting there when we come. Every year. But he's not there now."

Teddy could picture the absent lone figure so clearly in his mind that he'd felt somewhat strange to find the bench entirely vacant. It was rather odd, the young man mused as Harry wordlessly set off to wander over towards the bench, because in all the years that Teddy and Harry had been coming to lay flowers in the graveyard, they had only ever glanced the man's way for the briefest of moments. It was as if he were part of the graveyard, a permanent fixture. He was always there. But they had never spoken to him, never paused to offer him a nod. In turn the man never looked up from staring down into his lap, never went to stand by one of the graves. He sat as still as a statue, come rain or shine. It was surprising that Teddy remembered him at all.

Teddy turned his attention back to his mother's grave as he set about splitting the large bouquet of flowers he had bought in half, stepping to lay one bunch of flowers down upon his grandparents' resting place before crouching to arrange the other half next to Harry's offering.

"I've got an interview next week." he informed the gravestone as he leant back, shoving his hands deep into his pockets to keep out the bitter cold. "At Flourish and Blotts. Victoire and I have a plan, you see, for when she finishes Hogwarts. I'm going to find shop work for just a year, whilst she finishes school, save up some money. And then after she's taken her NEWTs I'm going to take her travelling...see the world...then I'll come back and tell you all about it."

As a fierce wind whipped at his cheeks, blowing his fringe into his eyes, Teddy turned his face into the chilly blast to sweep the hair back from his face, only to spot Harry crouched down beside the bench, examining something upon the ground. Curious, Teddy rose to his feet and wandered over to look down over Harry's shoulder, where he spied a single vivid pink rose held carefully in the Auror's hand.

At the sound of Teddy's footsteps, Harry's head whipped round to look up at his godson, and Teddy frowned to see his expression looked somewhat agitated.

"What's that?" Teddy asked, gesturing to the rose with a nod, and as he hastily stood up, Harry told him:

"It was just lying here. On the ground." And with that, Harry dropped the rose to the floor, before shoving his hand into his pocket and hastily drawing out his wand, his expression growing increasingly worried.

"What's wrong?" Teddy asked, frowning deeply, only for the Auror to demand:

"Be quiet a moment, I...I need to think!"

"Why? About what?"

"Ted be quiet! It's urgent!"

"What's urgent?!"

"Just be quiet, he might be in trouble!"

"Who..." Teddy began, only for a sudden burst of silver to erupt from Harry's wand, and as the silver stag shot off into the distance, Teddy felt as if he could hear a vague whisper streaking through the air in its wake.

_It's me._

_It's me, it's Harry._

_Tell me._

_Tell me where you are._

_Tell me you're alright._

_Where are you?_

_It's Harry._

_Where are you?_

_It's me..._

_Tell me!_

And as the whispering faded off into nothing, the graveyard grew suddenly still once again.

Harry slowly lowered his wand, gaze fixated upon the spot in the distance where the stag had disappeared, and for a moment Teddy felt his heart beginning to race in his chest as he too stared off into the distance.

"Who's in trouble?" the young wizard whispered after a while, and when Harry didn't reply instantly he wondered: "Is it...the man? The man on the bench? Do you...Harry do you know him?!"

"Of course I know him!" Harry snapped, his anxiety quite overcoming him for a second, only for Teddy to ask:

"Who is he, then?"

Harry's head whipped round to look at his godson and Teddy saw that he had grown ghostly pale, his eyes wide in panic as he hastily decided:

"N...nobody! He's...he's nobody!"

He looked...guilty, Teddy decided as he watched Harry hastily turn and stalk back towards the graveside.

Teddy's next thought stopped Harry dead in his tracks.

"Don't you think it's a bit odd," the young metamorphmagus mused, stooping to retrieve the fallen rose, stroking a finger across the its velvety petals, "that the one time we come and nobody's left roses on Mum's grave...that man isn't here either?" He turned to find Harry's shoulders had grown somewhat hunched where he stood, musing: "It's almost as if...as if he's the one who leaves them there."

There was a long pause before Harry asked:

"Why would he do that, Ted?"

"I don't know." Teddy said, making towards the graveside himself. As he passed Harry he theorised: "Perhaps he knew her."

He'd thought more than just that in the short walk across the graveyard, but he had found himself holding back.

Found himself wanting to give Harry the opportunity to reach the same conclusion first.

Found himself wanting to make Harry squirm.

Because Harry knew. Teddy had seen it on his face. And Merlin, it made Teddy's blood boil at the mere thought of it, made him want to _scream_...

"You know who that man is, don't you Harry?" the young wizard observed after a long couple of minutes of silence, his fingers curling tightly around the rose until the thorny stem drew blood upon his finger. When Harry said nothing, Teddy threw the rose down upon the grass, rounding on the Auror as he insisted: "He's my father, isn't he?!"

Because there seemed no other explanation. Teddy knew of no other man who would so religiously lay flowers upon his mother's grave, flowers the vivid shade of her hair. Teddy could not imagine anybody else sitting so still and quiet, so broken...

Harry visibly swallowed the lump in his throat.

"Teddy..." he began, voice not much more than a strained whisper, but Teddy could already hear the reason beginning to creep into his godfather's voice, and he could not bear to hear it.

"I'm right, aren't I?! My dad isn't dead, is he?! You...you know it! You must do, you looked so guilty back there! You...you've known for years! You've been lying to me!"

"Listen Ted..."

"He's...he's been...he's been sitting there! Every year! Every year he's sat there and watched us and...and you've not so much as glanced at him! You've not said a word! Neither of you!"

"It's for the best, Teddy." Harry insisted, voice raised a little to be heard above the young man's increasingly agitated exclamations, only for Teddy to shout:

"For the best?! How can it be for the best?! How can...how can letting me think my father is...is dead or...or Merlin knows what be for the best?! I...I...who else knows?!"

"Nobody..." Harry mumbled, reaching to rake a despairing hand through his hair. "I...nobody else knows anything, your dad and I agreed..."

"Agreed?!"

"Yes...well...I didn't want to agree but...but it was the...the best option available..."

"Best option?! Merlin...!" Teddy turned to scowl off into the distance, his heart racing in his chest as he tried to make sense of it all, sucking in a deep breath to try and stem his fury.

"Let me...let me try and explain..." Harry murmured, shuffling his feet somewhat apprehensively. "I...it wasn't what I wanted for you, Ted. But...but your dad...well he's your dad and...and if he thought it was for the best then...then it's not for me to argue with him..."

He was good at arguing with Remus.

Or at least he seemed to have made a habit of it.

"Don't tell them." the werewolf had insisted that evening as the sun set in streams of orange and smeared scarlet in the sky above them, casting a strange light down amongst the grimy buildings of Knockturn Alley. "Whatever you do, don't tell anybody you've seen me."

Harry, having just bid goodbye to Neville in the Three Broomsticks before stepping out onto the deserted cobbles of Diagon Alley, had simply gaped at him, mouth hanging open wide.

"Are you...are you kidding?" he gasped, reaching to push his glasses up his nose as if he couldn't believe his eyes as well as his ears.

He'd spotted Remus descending the marble steps that led to the entrance of Gringotts a few minutes earlier, and after stopping dead in his tracks in sheer astonishment at the sight of him, Harry had sprinted full pelt down the street, shouting the werewolf's name at the top of his lungs. Remus had pretended not to hear him and only consented to pausing in his shuffling walk when the young wizard had finally caught up with him and reached to clamp a hand down upon his shoulder.

_Wait!_ Harry had panted, only for Remus to reach to grab him by the elbow, and before Harry knew it they had veered abruptly sideways into the shady confides of Knockturn Alley.

"Remus," Harry said, eyes wide and imploring. "We've all been looking all over for you...everybody has! For...for weeks! Moody's been...been organising search parties, for Merlin's sake! We've all been worried sick, we were starting to think you were dead!"

"Then let them think it." Remus told him, reaching to shove his hands deep into the pockets of his fraying coat. "They mustn't find me, Harry..."

"Why not?!" Harry cried, shaking his head in incomprehension. "I...I know it's difficult, Remus, I know it is but...but we've all...we've all lost people and...and we all need to stick together! Disappearing off on your own is just...just...what about Teddy?! What about your son?!"

"He went so deathly pale," Harry recalled, reaching to rake a hand through his hair. "Ghostly, he was..."

"And what did he say?" Teddy asked rather impatiently. "What did he say about me?!"

"He said it didn't matter if you were his son." Harry recalled bleakly. "You might've been his son but he couldn't be your father..."

"...so let that child have a dead father, Harry." Remus had insisted, "A dead father is better to him than one who is living. One who is me..."

"Did you have a dead father before you could walk or talk?!" Harry snapped furiously. "D'you know how bloody marvellous that is?! To be brought up like...like that?! I won't do it! I'll tell everybody I've seen you! I mean it!"

"He'll come looking for me..." Remus began, agitated at the notion, and Harry agreed:

"Of course he will! As soon as he's old enough he's going to start asking questions! I'll not lie to him when he does, either!"

"Harry...that boy..."

"That boy has a name!" Harry interrupted furiously. "You chose it for him! Why don't you try using it?!"

"I didn't choose his name. That was all up to...all up to D...D..." the name seemed to stick in Remus' throat and he visibly swallowed and instead told Harry: "...his mother. The only thing I chose for him was his godfather. And I'll have chosen poorly if you don't do as I ask."

"Teddy needs his dad."

"Harry..."

"And you need him, too..."

"I don't. I don't need him. I don't want him..."

It felt like a physical blow to Harry's chest. And he stared blankly at the werewolf, recalled just that morning, sat upon the sofa in Andromeda's living room, gazing down at that beautiful, perfect, precious little life that he had held in his arms...the wonder of it...

How could Remus possibly not want that? Not want his own son...

"I can't touch him." Remus half-whispered, voice so strained that Harry very nearly didn't decipher the words, and when he blinked Harry found the werewolf had reaching to press a hand to his eyes. "I...I can't touch him, Harry, he's...he's like...he's like his mother, I can't touch him, it's not safe and I...even if I could I...I can't look at him, I can't...he'll look like her, he will, I know he will...and I can't...if...if it wasn't for him she'd...she'd probably still be here and...and I know that's not...that's not his fault but I can't stand it, I can't, I...I won't...I just won't do it. I don't want him...I don't want him..."

Despite the feeling of his chest constricting in despair at the damning notion, Harry insisted:

"But I can't tell everybody you're dead. I...I can't...they're worried sick..."

"I'll disappear."

"What?!"

"I'll disappear entirely if anybody comes looking for me, Harry. I'll go abroad..."

"But...!"

"I won't have it any other way...it's...it's the best I can do for the child and...and myself..."

There was a long, long silence.

Harry stared at Remus.

And Remus stared back.

"And that's when I knew it was hopeless." Harry told Teddy miserably, reaching to brush a stray lump of moss from atop the headstone in front of them. "I knew then that he wasn't going to compromise...that he was going to be dead to us..."

As he stared at the bedraggled man before him, Harry found his vision beginning to swim and he reached to snatch the glasses from his face, rubbing a sleeve across his eyes.

"I...I've not felt right," he complained, shoulders slumped as his gaze dropped towards his shoes. "The war's ended and I thought...I thought I'd feel different...better...but I don't, Remus. I don't!"

"Nobody feels _right_ after a war, Harry." the werewolf told him truthfully. "Just because it's over doesn't mean it's going to go away. It still happened..."

"No! Not...not like that!" Harry's gaze darted imploringly back up to Remus' face and he took a small step forward as he explained: "I felt like...like it wasn't finished. Like...like it couldn't be over."

"And why not?"

"Because we didn't bury everyone that...that might need burying. And because we hadn't found everybody who needed finding. We hadn't buried you, Remus. We couldn't find you! You're...you're the only one I've got left who...who knew my parents well...who knew Sirius well! You're the only one I feel like I can...I can talk to about...about anything! And...and you've been gone! And...and if you were dead then...then I suppose I...I'd just have to get on with it, like with Sirius! I could...I could accept it and...and adapt. But...but you're not dead! I know you're not dead! I can't just...just let you disappear! I can't pretend you're dead, Remus! If you're alive then...then I need you! I need to know that you're...that you're here if I need you! Please..."

"I said _please don't abandon me_." Harry recalled, sighing heavily. "And I felt like such an idiot...such a baby! It must've sounded laughable...after everything I'd been through I still thought I needed your dad around to hold my hand and walk me through life..."

"And did you?" Teddy asked, stooping to retrieve the rose that he had tossed to the floor some while earlier, twirling it thoughtfully around in his fingers.

"Of course I did. I _do_. We all need somebody, Ted. We all need somebody to guide us, like your dad guides me..."

It had been the most awful, hollow, sinking feeling, it had been swallowing him up, making his limbs heavy, making the world seem utterly void of light, of hope...

And it had been. It had been utterly hopeless.

He had been utterly hopeless.

He'd lay in his makeshift bed upon the floor of Ron's bedroom, listening to Ron's soft snores and the hurried sounds of Christmas preparations going on downstairs, listened to the sounds of a house crammed full of people and cheer.

And yet he had felt utterly alone and miserable.

He'd slipped out of bed, pulled on the crumpled clothes from the night before and headed downstairs, his heart still heavy and sinking in his chest, struggling to plaster some sort of smile onto his face when a moment later he stepped into the kitchen of the Burrow where as usual Mrs. Weasley had greeted him with a beaming smile and offered him half the contents of the larder for breakfast.

"Is there a meeting today?" Harry had asked her, consenting to sitting down at the kitchen table and nibbling at a bit of toast as Ginny cleared away the remains of somebody's fry up. "With the Order, I mean? Is...is anybody coming over...?"

"He means is Remus coming over." Ginny had informed her mother simply, offering Harry a raised eyebrow, and Harry very nearly scowled at her, because in a way his motives felt far too private to be tossed about and discussed so freely.

"Remus?" Molly had repeated, frowning deeply. "I shouldn't think so, Harry dear. Dumbledore's got him up to something or other and when he's not doing that he's..." she trailed off, shaking her head with a mutter before she decided: "That reminds me, Ginny dear, you'll owl Tonks for me won't you?"

"Why?"

"I thought she might like to come for tea."

"I don't think she will. She didn't the other day. Or last week. Or the week before tha..."

"Yes, yes I know! But do owl her, won't you?"

"I think she's avoiding us."

"Don't be ridiculous, Ginny."

"I'd avoid us if I were her," Ginny had grumbled to Harry as she shuffled out of the room. "If I knew we had Phlegm here for Christmas I'd stay clear of this house until at least Easter next year, just in case..."

Her mother had huffed, apparently having heard ever word, and Harry had not been sure whether or not it had been a huff of annoyance or amusement.

"Can't you ask Remus to come for tea too?" Harry had wondered rather hopefully, and Molly had gave another huff, this time not amused in the slightest.

"I don't think he'll be volunteering to sit at my table for quite some while yet!" the witch had said, only to admit: "He'll be here for Christmas, of course. I asked him months ago and he's already accepted. There's no backing out of that now."

Had Harry not felt utterly despondent at the notion he might have felt curious as to what precisely was going on that seemed to have Remus in Molly's bad books, or indeed the other way around. Apparently his expression was unmistakable, for Molly had wondered:

"What's the matter dear? Is it something urgent? Perhaps I could help? Or Arthur?"

"No...I mean no it's not urgent. It's just...well..." Harry had found himself trailing off into silence, not wanting to admit much more, only for Ginny's voice to call from somewhere in the sitting room:

"I'm owling Remus, alright?!"

"It's certainly not alright!" Molly had cried, abandoning the tea towel in her hands so that they could fly to her hips.

"Why not? Harry's been banging on about seeing him for days..."

"No owls, Ginny! It's not at all safe for him to be getting owls..."

But at that precise moment Harry had heard a distinct fluttering of feathers and as he glanced out of the window to see an owl swooping off into the distance, Ginny had called:

"What, Mum?!"

"Oh Ginny!" Molly had exclaimed, and Harry had hastily slipped out of his chair and made for the back door as an argument instantly broke out between mother and daughter.

It had seemed to Harry that he had only sat out upon the back steps, shivering for his lack of a cloak, for no more than thirty minutes when he heard the distinct pop of apparation...

"And there he was." Harry recalled, smiling faintly as he and Teddy stood side by side, gazing over towards the vacant bench as if Remus might just appear there too. "He showed up to see me, just like that..."

At the sight of Remus striding through the long grass towards him, Harry had launched himself to his feet, a flood of relief washing over him and his shivering forgotten as he dashed across the yard to meet the werwolf by the back gate.

"Morning Harry," the ex-professor had greeted as the two of them came to a halt, the gate between them, and Harry had found himself observing:

"You came."

"I did." had been the reply, and Remus' lips had twitched towards a smile. He had looked dreadfully worn and bedraggled, and yet it didn't register much with Harry at the time, instead Harry had found himself blurting:

"I'm so glad because I...I keep...I keep having these dreams..."

"Dreams?" Remus had repeated, leaning forward against the gate, his expression growing instantly anxious, only for the concern to fade from his features when Harry explained:

"You have to tell me...what to do, Remus. It's Sirius. I keep seeing him again. I keep seeing him dying and I...I wake up and I feel like...like I don't have anyone...like there's nobody I can talk to. Not like I used to talk to him. And...and every time I just think...things are just getting worse and worse and...and I don't have Sirius anymore. I don't have anybody..."

"I ranted and rambled at him for ages. Didn't make any sense, I expect. But he just stood there, listening." Harry recalled, smiling faintly. "Leaning up against that gate. He listened and listened until I'd talked myself hoarse and then he just said..."

"Look at me, Harry." Remus had taken a step backwards, reaching to spread out his arms with a smile. "Look at me standing here. Take a good look and tell me that you don't have anybody."

Harry had given an abashed huff and muttered:

"You must think I'm an idiot."

"Not at all. I'm no substitute for Sirius, I'm sure. But you know as well as I do that you are not as alone as you feel. If you didn't know that, you would not have asked Ginny send for me. You know you are not alone, Harry. Because you sent for me. And I came to you."

"And after the war I still wanted that." Harry explained with an almost abashed chuckle, beginning to pace with his hands clasped together behind his back. "He said he'd be here in this graveyard every year, but that wasn't enough. I wanted to know that...that even though your dad was gone...he'd still be there at any moment when I needed him the most..."

"Just tell me where you're staying!" Harry pleaded, reaching to grab hold of Remus' arm as if he might slip away into the shadows of Knockturn Alley and disappear for good. "Just...tell me...give me an address or something!"

"You mustn't try and visit me..."

"Fine! Fine, whatever you say! Let me...let me write to you..."

"But I wouldn't write back..." the werewolf told him frankly, and the young wizard cried:

"I don't care! I don't care if you don't write back, just...just give me an address! Give me something...anything!"

Remus sighed wearily, shaking his head.

"Harry, why..."

"Because, Remus! Because if you've got to be gone...if that's the way it has to be then I've got to know that you aren't really gone at all! I've got to believe that I could send for you. And I've got to believe that you would come to me!"

"I...couldn't, Harry..." Remus mumbled, sounding distinctly guilty, only for Harry to shake his head and tell him:

"I don't care! I don't care if you think you couldn't! Molly thought you couldn't that time Ginny sent for you to come to the Burrow! Molly said it was too dangerous to even send you an owl! But you came, didn't you?! You came at the drop of a hat! So I don't give a toss if...if you reckon you'll abandon me! Because I don't believe you! You won't!"

"And has he?" Teddy wondered as Harry's pacing grew faster, his gaze still glancing towards the bench ever so often. "Has he abandoned you?"

"He can't have." Harry insisted stubbornly, reaching to tug impatiently at his hair. "He wouldn't, I know he wouldn't..."

"He's not responding to you now though, is he?" Teddy pointed out rather bleakly, only for Harry to snap:

"He will! He will respond! He'll...he'll come! Just you wait!"

And so they waited.

And waited.

Teddy stood, shuffling from foot to foot, an odd, excited, nervous energy pulsing through every one of his limbs.

He might see his father.

His father!

Any moment now...

He tried to make some sense of his thoughts, of his feelings, of how he felt about it all after everything he had been told over the years. And yet it all simply blurred into one great rush of uncertainty that made him feel sick and excited all at once...

He began to conclude that really, he just wanted a glimpse. Just a glimpse. It didn't matter what it was like, he couldn't possibly imagine such a thing convincingly enough to care.

He just wanted a glimpse.

A proper glimpse of his father. Knowing exactly who he was.

And they waited.

And waited.

But Remus did not come.

"Something's wrong." Harry decided at last, his pacing coming to an abrupt halt and his face contorted in worry. "Something's keeping him...something isn't right..."

"What're you going to do?" Teddy asked, his stomach twisting into uncertain, bewildering knots.

What if something awful had happened?

What if the other Order members were right? What if his father wasn't still alive? What then?

Teddy wasn't sure he could bear it, knowing what he did now, knowing that he had seen his father on so many occasions and simply walked on by...

It was a simply crushing notion, utterly unbearable...

Harry was fumbling around with something in his pocket and Teddy watched the Auror retrieve his wallet, before fishing around inside it to extract a scrap of wrinkled, faded parchment.

"Give me your arm." Harry instructed, holding out a hand, and as he took a few cautious steps forward, staring at the address scrawled upon the paper in his father's script, Teddy felt as if his heart had stopped dead in his chest.

They apparated to narrow cobbled alleyway, the looming buildings either side of the dull and concrete grey, coloured by layers of grime and patterned with numerous cracks and holes. Teddy made to step towards the wider street beyond, only for Harry to give him a gentle tug in the opposite direction.

In silence they walked further down the alleyway, which seemed to Teddy to grow more narrow than ever, until suddenly they reached a decrepit stone archway in the left wall. Stepping through the narrow entrance, Teddy found they were standing in a small cobbled courtyard, the surrounding buildings, industrial in nature, had tall, narrow windows, the glass smashed and cracked in many places, all except for the small building straight ahead, a modest single-storied little structure that was dwarfed by those around it.

And it was to this meagre dwelling that Harry made for.

Pausing at the top of the cracked, uneven steps before the bare wooden door that looked somewhat ready to fall off it's hinges, Harry cast one rather nervous glance over his shoulder at his godson, before reaching to turn the door handle.

Left unlocked, the door swung open with ease and with that, Harry led the way inside.

Bare, chipped plaster walls and wooden floorboards greeted them in the little hallway, and Harry instantly made a beeline for the door directly to their left, flinging it open as he called:

"Remus?!"

Watching Harry glance around the sparse, empty kitchen, only to back out again and make for the next room, which appeared to be a bathroom, Teddy attempted to swallow his nerves in order to help with the search.

It was then, glancing around at the remaining doors, that he noticed the one to his right had been left ajar.

Swallowing the lump that instantly lodged itself in his throat, Teddy set about taking a series of slow, cautious steps towards the door. He paused outside, toying with the door handle...

And then he heard a cough.

Teddy jumped, heart racing faster than ever, and for a moment he thought to shout for Harry...and yet...

Teddy reached to push open the door.

It was a bedroom.

Or rather it was a room with a mattress on the floor and not a whole lot else.

And there, the young wizard saw, lying fast asleep upon the mattress, crumpled bunch of vivid pink roses discarded upon the floor beside him, was Remus.

Teddy Lupin stood, frozen in the doorway, staring at the sleeping skeletal figure in silence, taking in his ragged clothes, his ghostly pale skin, his tangled grey hair and sweat-soaked brow, his body that trembled with fever...

And then the young wizard took a cautious step forward.

And then another.

And another.

And then he stood, staring down at the poor, wasted figure of his father with such a wash of feelings that they left him positively trembling...

The smallest of relieved smiles tugged at his lips, and with that he dropped down into a crouch at the sickly werewolf's side, gasping in a deep, elated breath.

"You're alive!" Teddy whispered, shaking his head ever so slightly as if he couldn't quite believe his eyes. "You're...you're alive, Dad! Barely, but you're alive!"

He reached with a shaking hand to press his palm carefully to his father's brow, wincing at the fever raging beneath his fingertips...

The father stirred.

And the son burned.


	12. A Room Tinted With Roses

_Note: I've been trying to figure this chapter out forever, and I have no clue if I've made a mess of it or not! I hope somebody likes it, anyway, so here goes..._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**12: A Room Tinted With Roses**

He stood in the kitchen, staring dully down at the little tray laden with tea and toast, willing himself to pick it up, and yet his arms felt like lead at his sides.

At the sound of tea being poured into a cup behind him, he glanced round at the grizzled old Auror sat at the kitchen table and found himself wondering:

"Do you ever feel like this? As if...as if you can't even...can't even go up there...?"

Alastor Moody took a somewhat savage bite out of a slice of marmalade on toast, chewing noisily as he eyed the other wizard intently, face contorting as if the marmalade were sour.

"If I never went up there again it'd be sweet relief!" he growled, spitting crumbs down the front of his robes, only to pause to swallow, adding: "She gave up speaking to me days ago..." he gave a somewhat furious huff, snatching up his cup of tea and he admitted grimly: "I can't stand it...her being all..._quiet_!"

"Perhaps if...perhaps if you were to speak to her first..."

"I've not got a bloody word for her!"

"She's very upset, Alastor. You were up there for over half an hour yesterday, she said, and you didn't so much as utter a single word..."

"I _said_ I've not got a word for her!"

"Then why would she have a word for you? She's got plenty of tears for you, I'll tell you that. She was sobbing when I took her dinner last night."

Moody merely grunted irritably, taking a gulp of tea before looking back at his companion again, voice suddenly softer as he murmured:

"She's better off me being silent, Remus. Last time I spoke to her I told her she'd die in that bed. What a bloody thing to say, eh?" the old Auror made to push his chair back, apparently having lost his appetite as he suggested: "I could take that up for her, if you like. If you're struggling..."

Remus instantly snatched up the tray, his grip so tight upon it that his knuckles grew white.

"For the love of Merlin, Alastor," the werewolf murmured as he made a beeline for the hall, "don't let that be the last thing you ever say to her. And don't...don't leave it long...she's...she's..."

"Fading fast, Molly reckons." Moody recalled, and Remus opened his mouth to respond, only for no words to come out.

He took the stairs at a sluggish pace as if his shoes were full of concrete, his heart sinking lower and lower in his chest the higher he climbed. He paused outside the bedroom door, sucking in a deep, composing breath, rocking back on his heels a little as he willed himself to smile...

He didn't know why. She knew it was all a facade. She'd told him so only yesterday, flown into a sudden and brief rage that had left her utterly spent, cried and sobbed and demanded to know the point of it, the point of the smiles and laughter, why bother anymore...

Her moods were becoming increasingly unpredictable and sudden as if she were quite delirious come the nights.  
>And yet he would keep on smiling. Keep on cracking jokes until she sniggered, keep on praying she'd laugh...<p>

He could recall dinner back at Headquarters one evening, Molly busy serving casserole to everybody sat around the table, whilst Alastor shrugged on his cloak, ready to leave after an Order meeting. It had been a long drawn out departure for he had been busy scolding Dora for one misadventure or another; causing the witch to shrug and inform the room at large:

_It was hilarious, I was laughing all the way back to the Ministry..._

_It was no laughing matter, Nymphadora!_ Alastor had roared, slamming a fist down upon the table, causing Molly to narrowly avoid slopping Arthur's serving into his lap as she jumped. _You could've met your death! _

_In which case_, Dora had announced, chin jutting out in mock-arrogance, _I laugh in the face of death! _And with that she had promptly dissolved into fresh laughter and informed Ginny beside her:_ How cool is that? And it's technically true..._

_The bloody nerve of you...!_ Alastor had snapped in fury, but Sirius' laughter had drowned him out.

But Dora didn't laugh now. Not like that. Not anymore.

The room was dull, the lights dimmed as he reached to push the door open, and as he carefully carried the tray across the threshold, Remus found Dora staring blankly up at the ceiling, face as dull as the room around her.

"Room service..." he half-whispered in greeting, and her gaze dropped slowly down to watch him come to set the tray down upon the bedside table.

"Morning." she finally responded once he had poured her tea and come to perch upon the bed beside her, and as he reached into his pocket to extract a pair of worn leather gloves he asked:

"And would Madam like her usual report this morning?"

"Mm...please." she agreed, eyed drifting closed, and as he adjusted the gloves upon his hands her husband supplied:

"Well, this morning's Daily Prophet reports yet more wondrous reforms being put into place by our beloved government..."

"Hm..."

"The Quibbler reports yet more dreadful reforms being put into place by our hated government..."

"Mm..."

"Alastor reports that a he caught sight of a Dementer skulking behind the shower curtain when he got up to use the toilet at two thirty this morning..."

"Right..."

Rising back to his feet, Remus wandered over to the window, pushing back the curtain so that he could inspect the world outside the window, concluding:

"And the sky outside reports that we're expecting heavy rain today, much the same as yesterday."

"And you...?" Dora wondered, opening one eye to watch his progression back across the room to sit down again. "What've you got to report?"

Once he had sat down Remus reached to retrieve the plate of toast for her inspection.

"I've got little to report, save for the fact that I made you plain toast because you couldn't stomach the jam yesterday morning, and that I'm considering setting fire to the rug in the hallway as soon as Alastor is out of sight, because every time I walk past it attempts to wrap itself around my leg and trip me up...I've got bruises...!"

Dora managed a vague huff of amusement, eyes drifting closed again.

"It's nice." she mumbled sleepily as he replaced the plate upon the tray. "Our...little routine..." But then she sighed heavily, brow creasing as she mused: "Gone are the days you'd wake me with a kiss..."

"Mm." he agreed, gaze dropping to his lap.

"I wish you would. If only once."

"I wish I could. If only once."

They sat in silence for several minutes before he remembered the tea and toast.

"Your breakfast is getting cold, Dora." he reminded her, and she allowed her head to loll sleepily to the side to eye the tray with a frown.

"I'm not really hungry..." she confessed with a sigh, and he insisted:

"That's no excuse. You need to keep your strength up."

The witch gave a hollow chuckle as he reached to retrieve the cup of tea.

"What strength, Remus? I've not a drop left!"

"At least drink some tea." the werewolf insisted, attempting to ignore the lump that seemed to instantly lodge itself in his throat, and she sighed heavily, dragging herself up until she was sat a little more upright. She reached slowly up to accept the cup that he pressed into her hands, before clumsily lifting it to her lips. He watched her sip feebly at the tea, a few stray drop escaping her lips and running down her chin.

"It's dull in here, don't you think?" she mused a moment later once she had drained half the cup and he had reached to pluck it carefully from her hands before she could simply drop it into her lap. "It could do with some...some new wallpaper or...or new curtains. A bit of colour...it'd be less depressing."

As Remus gazed around the room, taking in the dark wooden furniture and greying olive wallpaper, Dora sighed heavily, her eyes drifting closed as she suggested:

"If you looked hard enough I bet you'd discover a brand new shade of grey."

"Here," Remus told her, reaching to extract his wand from his pocket, and the pale witch dragged her heavy eyelids open just in time to watch a burst of colour bloom from the tip, and within the blink of an eye she found herself offered a single, vivid pink rose.

"Well that's a start!" she chuckled, reaching to accept the lonely burst of colour, and Remus frowned down at it for a moment before suggesting:

"Wait here..."

"Wait here?" Dora echoed, raising an eyebrow in almost-amusement as he rose from his perch upon the bed and made a beeline for the door. "Where in Merlin's name were you expecting me to go?"

Moody was still in the kitchen when Remus arrived back downstairs. Having finished his breakfast, the former Auror was instead simply sat in his chair, gazing somewhat blankly down at his latest cup of tea that appeared to have grown stone cold. At Remus' unnaturally brisk entrance, Moody looked up, his expression bordering on disapproving.

"How was it?" he inquired gruffly, and as he reached to pull open a cupboard, Remus told him:

"_She_ was fine, Alastor."

Moody gave a snort.

"_Fine_...!" he scoffed, shaking his head, only to looked distinctly disgruntled when Remus asked:

"Do you happen to have a vase around here somewhere?"

"A what?"

"A vase, Alastor."

"Eh?!"

"A vase. To put flowers in..."

"I know what a bloody vase is for!"

There was a long pause before Remus was forced to turn to regard the man at the table who had returned to staring at his tea. He opened his mouth to once again voice his question, only to think better of it, instead mumbling:

"Never mind..."

No sooner had he turned back to gaze rather uncertainly into the cupboard, Moody saw fit to look up again and his voice was suddenly strange...softer...

"Weasleys sent an owl over. It came just now, whilst you were upstairs."

"What did it say?" Remus asked, turning around again, but Moody shook his head.

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing important."

Remus' mind positively boggled.

Surely everything was important? To Moody, at least? Even things that didn't register in most people's minds were of critical importance to Alastor Moody...

"Are you...quite well, Alastor?" he found himself asking, fully expecting to be snapped at in return, but to his increasing bemusement Moody merely shook his head again.

"Poor bird was sat at the window, tapping away for five minutes at least." the older wizard said, frowning deeply. "I...didn't hear it. Not at first. I don't...I don't know why!"

Remus wasn't entirely sure what the significance of this was at all and opened his mouth to mumble something vague, only for Moody to slam an abrupt fist down upon the table, making the cup and saucer in front of him judder.

"That bloody girl!" he exclaimed, reaching to bury his face in his hands for a moment before letting his hands fall back to the table with a slap. He pushed his chair abruptly back from the table, the legs screeching against the tiles, before rising to his feet, grunting: "I'm bloody well getting out of here!"

"Where are you going?" Remus asked as he watched the grizzled old wizard turn to stomp out into the hallway, snatching up a cloak from a hook by the door, but as he flung the garment around his shoulders, Moody merely snapped:

"OUT!"

The front door slamming behind him a moment later made Remus wince. After a moment of staring somewhat blankly around the kitchen he spotted the letter discarded upon the table and went to retrieve it. It was, admittedly, a somewhat unremarkable letter. The usual. Molly was once again asking after Dora, as she did every few days or so, and assuring that all was well at The Burrow for the time being.

Remus dropped the letter back down onto the table, feeling somewhat relieved, and turned his attention back to the task at hand before Moody's apparent fresh bout of madness had distracted him.

He entirely emptied the cupboards of pots and saucepans and hurried back upstairs, his arms positively laden with cookware.

Dora had fallen back asleep, he discovered as he made his somewhat awkward reentrance, and he did not bother to wake her as he went around depositing his stolen containers on every flat surface that he could lay eyes upon, before filling each pot or saucepan with a generous spray of water from his wand.

It took him near on an hour to fill each and every makeshift vase with a bursting bloom of pink roses to match the first, and the thought that Moody would no doubt be utterly furious with him when he found his kitchen cupboards bare only seemed to drive Remus on to greater extremes. By the time he found it somewhat impossible to squeeze a single extra bud in place, the entire bedroom was awash with colour and he stood for a long moment, admiring his work...

Moody really was going to kill him...

The thought made Remus smile. Laugh, even...

Laugh loudly.

Loud enough to wake Dora.

The witch, hands still resting atop the single flower in her lap, opened her eyes slowly and blinked, as if the sudden bright additions to the room were in some way a figment of her imagination. Then, once satisfied that they were in fact anything but fictitious, her lips curved into such a broad, bright smile that the vivid pink petals around the room seemed dull in comparison.

Remus hadn't seen her smile like that in days, weeks, he didn't know how long. He hadn't seen a truly happy smile for such a long time and at that moment he found himself feeling truly happy himself, he had quite forgotten the sensation...

And Merlin, what a sensation it was! It was like floating, soaring even! It was as if his heart had well and truly leapt so high that it might burst from his grinning mouth, it was as if he might do anything in the world and not care because the world was distant and beautifully tinted in a glorious shade of rose...

"Come here." Dora told him, her face still gloriously smiling, and he found himself stumbling as he went to sit upon the edge of the bed beside her.

She was all the more fantastical and wondrous close up, that smile like a ray of pure sunshine bursting through clouds, and he found himself quite overcome by it, by the rose tinted veil that had been cast before his eyes.

Her lips moved then, she said something but he didn't hear the words because he was far too focused on the increasing swell in his chest, and then she was laughing and there had never been anything more wonderful, more beautiful and...

And he couldn't help himself.

He'd lurched forward before he could quite think, and he didn't bother to think half a second later either as he'd crushed their lips together with such fervour that she jumped. She screwed her eyes shut, her brow growing increasingly creased and yet he felt so dizzy at that moment that it meant absolutely nothing to him. He was too consumed with her warm hands reaching feebly to slide up his arms, her cracked lips growing thrillingly hot...

He didn't know how long it was that he had been sat there, bathed in euphoria, didn't notice her fingernails beginning to dig scorching hot marks in his arms, didn't notice footsteps on the stairs, her brow growing damp, the door being flung half off its hinges as a soft groan escaped her lips and...

A heavy hand clamped painfully down upon his shoulder and Remus found himself yanked violently backwards and before he knew it he had been half-thrown off the bed, falling to the floor with a heavy thump, his head spinning as it struck the floor. And suddenly the rose tinted haze had evaporated and something had dragged his heart down to his boots and impaled it with a thousand knives...

"MAD-EYE DON'T!" he heard Dora shriek, her voice oddly slurred and Remus blinked to find the tip of a wand pointing directly in his face.

"BLOODY IDIOT!" Moody roared, grip so tight upon his wand that it made his arm tremble, "Look what you've done!"

For a half a second Remus didn't want to look, only to grit his teeth a little a dare to turn and look back towards the bed.

Dora was positively gasping to breathe, sweat-soaked and white as a ghost as she stubbornly insisted:

"I'm fine. It's fine!" Then she reached to swipe a sleeve across her lips with a wince and the sleeve came up bloodied.

Remus slumped back against the floorboards, eyes screwed shut as he heard Dora say:

"What're you doing with that wand? For Merlin's sake put it away, Mad-Eye!"

"I could hex him to death, I could!"

_Please do_, Remus thought numbly, but he felt entirely unable to speak. The rush of utter hatred for his own stupidity had left him entirely incapable of anything save for the desperate wish that he could take it all back. He'd bloody burn all the roses, he swore it, and he'd throw himself on the fire whilst he was at it too...

"Help him up."

"What?!"

"I said help him up! You damn near gave him a concussion!"

Before Remus could quite register what was going on he found himself being dragged roughly back onto his feet, before Moody gave him a shove towards the door and suggested:

"Go and wash your face, you're a mess." As he staggered out onto the landing he heard Dora inquire somewhat cooly:

"Talking to me now, are you?"

Moody gave a distinctly abashed huff.

"Aye, looks like it."

"What've you got to say?" Dora asked and Remus waited for him to utter something suitably damning, only for there to be a long pause before Moody demanded to know:

"LUPIN?! What the bloody hell have you done to my saucepans?!"

He'd filled the bathroom sink with icy water and plunged his head straight into it, held it there till the cold made him shudder and his lungs burnt for air, and for a moment he imagined drowning, of growing eternally numb. He wondered quite what had come over him back in the bedroom, and when he found it difficult to define he found himself fearful that one day it might just seize him again. When he shuffled back out onto the landing, his hair still dripping wet, he felt surprisingly unmoved to see Moody sat upon the edge of the bed, speaking in a soft murmur to Dora as he dabbed ointment to her scorched lips with a square of soaked linen.

"Sleep, lass." he heard the old wizard murmur, discarding the linen before reaching to pull the blankets up to her chin, tucking them firmly around her. "And don't tell me it was worth it. It wasn't."

"It was." Dora mumbled thickly, frowning into the blacks of her eyelids at the bitter taste the linen had left upon her lips.

And to Remus' surprise, Moody merely sighed heavily and told her:

"I won't argue with you." He reached to press a gnarled hand to her forehead, frowning worriedly, before reaching to smooth her hair in an entirely alien gesture, insisting: "Now sleep, Nymphadora."

"Don't call me Nymphadora, Mad-Eye." she mumbled, already dosing off, and Moody gave a huff of almost-amusement, whispering:

"I'll call you whatever I bloody well like, you insolent little sod."

As he'd passed Remus in the doorway a minute later, Moody's expression had been surprisingly sympathetic, but Remus had found himself staring at his shoes. He went to take Moody's place perched upon the bed, gazing miserably down at the sleeping witch. After a while his gaze came to rest upon swell of her stomach and he found himself scowling at it. He remained sitting there for a long while, scowling at the mocking lump only to jump to see Dora's hand move to rest atop it.

"You're crying." the witch whispered, and Remus wondered how long she had been awake, lying there watching him. He didn't look round at her, couldn't look round at her...

Her hand upon his cheek made him jump and he made to jerk away from her, only for her fingers to grasp somewhat painfully at his hair to halt his escape. He felt too tired by the whole business to put up any more of a fight and she turned his head until they were gazing at one another, her palm burning against his cheek.

"Cheer up, Sweetheart." Dora whispered, smiling weakly. "It's going to be great in the end."

"No it isn't." he told her frankly before he could stop himself, but she failed to look even vaguely wounded at his despair.

"Yes it is." she assured him, remarkably serene as her free hand tapped her bulging stomach, her other hand stroking his cheek soothingly. "We're going to have a baby. And he or she is going to be the most beautiful thing you'll ever see."

And despite himself Remus closed his eyes in misery at the thought, and the heat upon his cheek grew scorching...

Burning. His cheek was burning. His cheek was on fire...

Remus jerked away from the heat, his eyes snapping open as he scrambled under the blankets upon the mattress, disorientated to wake so suddenly, only to freeze as he turned to look back up towards the ceiling...

A young man with sandy hair and startlingly familiar dark eyes was crouched over him, staring down at him, expression shocked as he held one hand clutched protectively to his chest as if it were injured.

Remus' head was spinning, his heart hammering in his chest as he drew in a deep, startled breath to see the intruder who shuffled gingerly back a step, only for them to both jump at the sound of another stranger coming barreling into the room, making enough noise to wake the dead.

"REMUS!"

Sweet Merlin, the werewolf thought, gaze snapping to look past the young man at the second intruder, that voice was startlingly familiar...

And as he watched Harry Potter come skidding to a halt behind the sandy haired boy, Remus felt panic begin to descend upon him, he struggled to try and sit up...

"You...c...can't be here..." he attempted to protest hoarsely, as if this might make Harry disappear into thin air, but Harry's attention had abruptly shifted to his companion who was still staring down at the werewolf with wide eyes.

"Did you touch him?!" Harry demanded to know, and when the boy failed to respond he reached to shake him somewhat roughly by the shoulder, repeating: "Did you touch him?!"

"I...I..." the boy began, entirely tongue tied, and Remus felt distinctly faint at the sudden bombardment of...of thoughts...feelings...emotions...confusion...

Harry shouldn't be here. He shouldn't! He couldn't be here, he'd promised, he couldn't really be here, it had to be some sort of illusion...it was the fever, he was seeing things...

And the boy. The boy looked...he looked like...he looked exactly like...

_No, no, no...just...no...please no..._

Remus couldn't breathe.

He jumped when Harry reached to fling a firm arm around the boy's shoulders, pulling him backwards towards the door.

"Wait outside..."

"No!"

"He's completely disorientated, you're making it worse! Wait outside..."

"But..."

"WAIT OUTSIDE, TEDDY!" Harry demanded furiously, and at the name made Remus' insides turn over and his mind positively swim he watched numbly as Harry half-threw the boy out into the hallway, slamming the door shut behind him, as Teddy called:

"DAD!"

A wave of Harry's wand later and silence had descended upon the room, and Remus watched in panic as the boy..._man now_...came to drop down upon the floor beside him.

"It's alright Remus," Harry was telling him, reaching to pull the blankets off of him. "It's only me. I just...I had to check up on you, that's all..."

Only him? Only him?! There was no such thing as Only Harry, no such thing at all! This was just...it was just...well it was simply...

He was wearing Auror robes. Like Dora had used to wear. The bright scarlet made Remus' eyes water.

He looked well. He'd been looking after himself...

"You haven't been looking after yourself." Harry observed disapprovingly. "You look like death! Have you been to see a healer?!"

Remus remained mute, only for Harry's hands to reach to grip him by the shoulders and he pleaded:

"Remus...say something! Please!"

Remus tried to wet his lips.

"I told you not to contact me." he managed, wincing at how hoarse his voice had grown. "I told you never to come here..."

"And you told me you'd always be at the graveyard on Tonks' birthday!" Harry pointed out, sounding agitated at the thought.

Not nearly as agitated as Remus felt, especially to hear her name. He hadn't heard her name in years. Didn't want to hear it, either...

He didn't want to hear excuses. Didn't want to hear anything. He didn't want Harry here, didn't want him causing trouble, didn't want to be thrown back into the world...

And the boy! He'd brought the boy here, for Merlin's sake! How could he do that?!

Of all the dreadful things that Harry could ever possibly do...!

"Leave." He insisted, screwing his eyes shut against the swell of panic that was beginning to coarse through him.

"Don't be ridiculous, Remus." Harry told him. "I'm not going anywhere, you're really sick..."

"Leave and...and take...take that...take that boy home! He should never have been here!"

"I won't." Harry insisted, and Remus' eyes snapped back open to glare furiously at him.

"What've you done?!" the werewolf asked, reaching to press a hand to his cheek that had burnt so furiously just minutes beforehand. "You brought that boy here and...and he's...he's gone and...and touched me and...!"

"He'll be fine. It was...it was nothing..."

"IT'S NOT NOTHING!"

"You're overreacting..."

"Overreacting?!" Remus felt so dizzyingly furious that he didn't even notice the door being half-blasted back open as Teddy broke through Harry's feeble attempts to seal it shut. As the boy took a step back into the room he found the werewolf had reached to grasp hold of Harry's arms, his sickly face bordering on purple with anger as he exclaimed: "I leave MY SON in...in YOUR care and...and you think letting him wander in here without warning is...is NOTHING?! IT'S DANGEROUS, HARRY! I am NOT overreacting!"

And to Teddy's shock Harry leant back, his expression suddenly sobering.

There was a long pause, before the Auror pointed out:

"I thought you said he was Tonks' son, Remus. Not yours."  
>"H...he's...he's not...he's not mine..."<p>

"You just said he was yours."

"He's not mine!" Remus snapped, only to dissolve into a violent coughing fit, reaching to clamp his hands over his mouth.

Harry watched him, his expression oddly thoughtful.

Then the Auror admitted:

"I'm sorry."

Remus slumped back upon the mattress, eyes screwed shut, turning to bury his face in the pillow with a shudder.

"I...I am, I'm really sorry." Harry said again, glancing over his shoulder at Teddy in the doorway. "It...it was selfish of me, I know, but I...I was worried about you, Remus."

The werewolf said nothing.

Teddy made to take a step forward, only for Harry to hold a hand out to stop him.

"I always worry about you." the Auror went on, sounding almost abashed. "I...I worry about you every day. Where...where you are, what you're doing...if...if you're lying in some bloody awful shack of a house on...on a mattress on the floor with a raging fever and...and nobody to...to make you look after yourself!"

"You shouldn't." Remus half-whispered into the pillow, having seemingly lost his voice.

"Of course I should. You're the only relative Teddy has left, for one thing! Even if you're not around, that counts for something! And what...what would Tonks have to say if...if she'd known you'd...you'd end up like this?!"

"D...don't..."

"She'd have been mortified!"

"Don't talk a...about..."

"About Tonks?! Why not?! We all talk about Tonks, Remus. We all...we all talk about her because we miss her like mad and it hurts! And it's no different with you, either! We miss you! All of us miss you, even...even Teddy misses you and he's...he's never even known you! We miss you and it hurts! It _hurts_ us, Remus! It hurts us a...a whole lot more than...than a burning hand, I promise you that!"

"You...h...have to leave, Harry." Remus insisted half-heartedly, causing Harry to give a frustrated sigh.

And Teddy stepped forward, reaching to pull his sleeve down over his scorched hand as he drew in a deep breath to inform his father:

"Don't worry, we're leaving."

Both Harry and Remus turned to stare at him, Harry expression bordering on betrayed until the young man insisted:

"And we're taking you with us."


	13. Back From the Dead

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**13: Back From The Dead**

It was strange, she thought as she herded her two bickering sons down the lane towards their house, wincing a little when the older one struck the other in the shoulder with a hefty paper shopping bag, the images that stuck in your head. As she gave her daughter a gentle tug on he hand to persuade her away from the deep puddle they were approaching, she again thought of the two youngsters she had spotted in Diagon Alley an hour previously; a boy, a girl and an ice cream sundae with a single spoon, smiling, giggling, dreamy-eyed and triumphant that they had found each other. She found herself smiling a little, casting her mind back to when she was their age, back when she had thought she knew all about love too.

Ginny Potter had thought the whole dating and boys thing was a piece of cake when she had been their age. She'd had a boyfriend or two whilst she had been at school and it hadn't seemed that difficult, she hadn't seemed to have had trouble finding herself one...

And Merlin, she'd been clueless!

She always smiled, now she was older, to see youngsters playing at love, because she had been naïve like them once too, only for the whole facade to crack several years earlier for her than it did for anybody else.

Because she had realised, during her fourth year at Hogwarts, that she didn't just rather like Harry Potter. She loved him. She was absolutely head over heels...

She could still remember the panic that such a realisation had thrown her into, and she'd spent several weeks in a state of pure confusion and helplessness.

She hadn't known what to do. What was the proper thing to do, when you realised somebody was the love of your life?

She had supposed that she should probably ask her mother, and she had spent an entire morning shortly after coming home for the summer, sat in her bedroom, staring at herself in the mirror, willing herself to have the nerve. By the time she felt she could just about manage it she had felt in an odd way that she was about to burst, and she had rushed downstairs, bursting into the kitchen, ready to mindlessly shout her love from the nearest window.

Except Molly hadn't been there. Instead, to her surprise, Ginny had found a mousy haired Tonks sat hunched at the table, clutching a large mug of tea as if her life had depended on it. And Ginny had been so fit to burst, so desperate for help, that she found herself musing that quite frankly anyone would do, and in fact Tonks would likely do better than most. She liked Tonks, liked to think they were something approaching good friends despite their difference in age. Tonks was rather like a big sister, and spilling secrets to a sister was, as is well known, easier than to a mother by far...

And so she had skidded to a halt beside Tonks' chair, which had barely startled the Auror at all for she seemed quite lost in thought, and blurted everything in a mumbling, bumbling, uncertain monologue that had seemed to span an age but in reality had been squeezed into a few frantic seconds.

Ginny had never quite gotten over Tonks' response.

The Auror had leant back in her chair, looked the girl up and down in distinctly grim consideration. And then she had said:

"Oh dear."

There had been a long pause and Ginny's cheeks had grown as red as her hair, and then Tonks had sighed and reached to pull out a chair from under the table.

"You're much too young to be in love, Gin." she'd said, patting the seat to indicate that the girl ought sit down beside her. "You're supposed to wait until you're legally old enough to drown your sorrows in something stronger than orange squash."

Ginny had scowled at the fruit bowl upon the table in front of her and mused that if this was Tonks' idea of humour these days she was not amused in the slightest.

"What am I supposed to do?" she'd asked bleakly, and Tonks had frowned down into her mug of tea for a long moment before deciding:

"I can't really tell you that."

"Why not?!"

"Well it's not something I know very much about."

It had occurred to Ginny then that really Tonks was probably the last person in the world who wanted to be having a conversation like this just then, she'd been eavesdropping on the Auror's visits with Molly for the past few weeks and knew that when it came to having a firm grasp of her love life, Tonks' grip was slipping and she was fast plummeting towards rock bottom.

"Have you heard from Remus recently?" the girl had asked despite herself, and the mousy haired witch had sighed and said:

"It's a long game, Ginny. Love, I mean."

Ginny had fidgeted a little in her chair, her stomach twisting into knots when Tonks had gone on to admit:

"And it's terribly destructive and it drains the very life out of you, and sometimes you can't even breathe...but before you know it you've forgotten what it was like before it happened...it consumes your entire life and yet you have absolutely bugger all idea what to do about it...it's all you can do not to scream! But then sometimes, Ginny...sometimes even wanting to scream becomes too much..."

And with that the Auror's eyes had shone with sudden life and she'd risen abruptly from her chair, holding a hand out to the girl with a grin that Ginny hadn't seen in weeks.

"So," Tonks whispered as the girl had simply stared numbly at her. "What's a witch to do?"

And before she'd known it, Ginny had found her hand snatched up and she was being dragged up out of her chair, out of the kitchen and up the stairs, their feet stumbling and footfalls noisy as they raced to the top of the house, the girl's mind racing as they burst into Ron's attic room. And Tonks reached to fling the window open wide, and announced breathlessly:

"Sometimes, Ginny, you just have to _scream_!"  
>And with that the witch had grasped hold of the window sill and leant so far out of the window that it had made Ginny flinch.<p>

And Tonks had screamed and screamed at the top of her lungs, and for the briefest second Ginny had thought her hair seemed ever so slightly brighter.

"Go on," the Auror had said a moment later, her outburst over and done with, replaced by laughter instead. "Try it, you'll feel better, I promise!"

And Ginny had sniggered a bit, but had consented to taking Tonks' place at the window. She'd gasped in a deep breath and screamed out at the world until her throat grew sore and throbbing.

"D'you feel any better?" Tonks had asked from just behind her, and the girl had given a breathless little laugh and admitted:

"No, not really...it's just given me a sore throat..."

And as she led the way up the garden path, reaching to unlock the front door of the Potter house with a discreet tap of her wand, the children bundling into the house, the boys racing into the sitting room and Lily darting up the stairs, Ginny was so lost in the memory that she could practically hear Tonks' laughter, practically feel the witch's breath warm upon her face when the Auror had leant forward to whisper in the girl's ear.

"That's because," Tonks had whispered, as if she were about to impart some deeply secret and vital piece of knowledge, "you're doing it wrong."

Ginny had sniggered and informed the witch:

"You're mad, you know?"

"You reckon?"

"It's just screaming, Tonks. There's no right or wrong way to do it."

"Well that's where you're hopelessly wrong, Ginny." the Auror had insisted, still whispering into the girl's ear. "What you have to remember is why it is that you are screaming."

"Because I'm lost...because I...I'm frustrated..." Ginny had mumbled, feeling her face warm in embarrassment, and the metamorphmagus had given a huff of laughter and told her:

"Well you'll never get anywhere if you scream because of that."

Tonks had given the girl a small push forward until they were both leaning somewhat precariously out of the window, and then she had said:

"It's not a scream of frustration, Ginny. It's not a scream of despair, of failure, of hopelessness or anything of the sort. It might feel like it, sometimes, but you have to tell yourself otherwise."

"Then what do you tell yourself?" Ginny wondered dully, and she could tell that behind her Tonks was grinning as she said:

"It's a scream to rally you, Ginny. It's a call to arms! It's a _war cry_!"

And at such a notion, Ginny couldn't help but feel that in a bizarre way, put like that, screaming might just help. The noise, the burning in her throat, the pounding of her heart, the sheer fierceness of it all to jump start her vital organs, drive away the numbness of uncertainty and make her feel alive...

She thought she might take on the world, take on the unknown, take on love and win!

And with that she'd leant out of the window again, sucking in the deepest breath she could muster, hearing Tonks do the same beside her, and the two witches had stared out over the quiet fields of the world beyond the Burrow's back garden. There had been the slightest pause.

And they had screamed...

And, stood in her hallway, midway through pulling the boots from her feet, Ginny Potter could hear them...

At the sound of the high pitched scream sounding from somewhere upstairs, Ginny yanked the final shoe from her foot and made a run for the stairs, James and Albus appearing in the hallway behind her as she took the steps two at a time.

"Lily?!" she called as the high-pitched shriek of alarm finally faded away, and as she reached the top of the stairs she very nearly ran into her husband, who, having himself dashed out of the bathroom at the end of the landing, was forced to throw himself sideways against the wall to stop a full on collision.

"Ginny!" Harry greeted breathlessly, sounding distinctly alarmed. "You're back early..."  
>Before Ginny could so much as open her mouth to respond, let alone think of something suitably damning to utter at his apparent lack of panic to hear their daughter's distress, a blur of red hair came shooting out of Lily's bedroom and attached itself to the front of Harry's robes.<p>

"Daddy!" Lily shrieked, eyes wide as snitches as her brothers cluttered to a halt behind their mother upon the stairs. "There's a...a man in my bedroom!"

"Is there really?" Harry said, sounding remarkably unmoved by such an alarming announcement, and Ginny again made to scold him, reaching instinctively to draw her wand, only for a voice from downstairs to call:

"Is...is everything alright up there?"

"Teddy!" Lily exclaimed, turning to eye the young man who had appeared in the hallway below with horrified eyes. "There's a strange man in my room! He's in my BED!"

"You're all home rather early, aren't you?" Teddy commented, reaching to scratch his head in a distinctly sheepish manner, and Ginny felt her face growing hot in fury.

"Harry!" she hissed, rounding on her husband so that she could shoot him an utterly livid look. "What in Merlin's name is going on?!"

"Um..." Harry began, reaching to detach Lily from the front of his jumper so that he could edge towards the child's bedroom door. "It's alright...don't panic..."

"Who is it?!" Ginny hissed as Teddy dashed up the stairs, squeezing past the two boys and Ginny until he was stood at Harry's side. Ginny, though somewhat relieved that their lack of alarm made her strongly suspect that Lily's mystery intruder was nobody threatening, nevertheless felt suspicious when the two wizards came to block the doorway.

"It's just a...friend..." Harry began uncertainly, and Teddy nodded and whispered:

"He's not very well, you know..."

"So we thought we'd look after him for a little..."

"Lily's room was closest..."

"Yes and you put clean bedding on her bed this morning, so it just seemed best..."

The pair trailed off, exchanging a glance that suggested they were rather pleased with their explanation, and Harry held up the dripping wet face flannel and a bottle of alarmingly orange potion that he had retrieved from the bathroom, as if this made their mumbling more believable.

"Who is it?" Ginny asked again, taking a step forward, yet more suspicious when the two wizards stepped back a little.

"It's..."

"Nobody."

"Yes, it's nobody."

"And you can't go in there."

"No, you can't. He's very ill..."

"It's contagious."

"Exactly, and you aren't even supposed to be home for...for two..."

"Three!"

"...three hours!"

"Yes, you're not supposed to be home for three hours and you should all just go downstairs because he's trying to sleep!"

There was a long silence as Ginny glowered at Harry and Teddy, and Harry and Teddy merely stared somewhat pleadingly back.

"Please, Gin..." Harry implored, eyes widening meaningfully...

But then from somewhere inside the room there came a horrible coughing sound and Ginny's inner-Molly seemed to take over and she breathed:

"Merlin, he does sound sick!" And with that she demanded: "Let me see him!"

"But Ginny..." Harry began as Teddy mumbled similar protest, but before they could stop her she had half-barged her way past them into the bedroom beyond...

Ginny Potter stopped dead in her tracks.

It was _him_.

It was actually him.

He was thin and sickly and his hair had gone thin and silvery, and his eyes were sunken and framed by dark circles, and his lips were chapped and oh Merlin...

It really was him.

Lying tucked up in Lily's bed, the room swimming around him...

The room was swimming...

Ginny stumbled sideways into the wall, eyes fixated upon the long lost werewolf as Harry reached to grasp hold of his wife's elbow to steady her. She felt positively faint at the sight of him, blinking to try and bring world more clearly into focus.

Perhaps when it did Remus Lupin would disappear. Because he couldn't possible be here, it seemed entirely impossible, she wasn't supposed to see him ever again, he was supposed to have disappeared, he was supposed to be _dead_...

She wanted him to say something. Anything. Just to prove he was actually there, to prove it was actually him. But he was staring at her in a distinctly startled fashion that made the whole thing seem less and less plausible.

Remus didn't get startled like that. At least the Remus she had known as a child certainly hadn't. This man before her was more like some ghost of his former self, some broken whisper, some empty shell...

Ginny attempted to plant her feet more firmly upon the floor, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment. When she opened them again, Remus was still there.

"Remus...!" she finally said, voice odd and squeaky from the effort of forcing sound from her lips.

Remus visibly flinched.

Ginny pulled her arm free from Harry's grasp and crossed the room in a series of quick yet stumbling steps, reaching to grasp hold of the werewolf by the arm.

"I...we...everybody thought...you...we..." she tried to construct a coherent sentence but couldn't seem to get her mind in order.

Remus gave a distinctly stiff smile, lips curving vaguely up at the corners.

"You're...looking well, Ginny..."

Ginny wanted to scream.

"Well so are you!" she exclaimed, reaching to grasp fistfuls of red hair as behind her Teddy and Harry exchanged a disbelieving look, only for the witch to exclaim: "Considering we all thought you were _dead_!" She sounded utterly furious and yet she promptly lunged forwards to throw her arms around him, burying her face in his shoulder.

She had never hugged Remus before. He had, after all, been her teacher for a year at Hogwarts and he was the sort of family friend with whom her father had shaken hands instead of slapped upon the back and it would have just seemed vaguely unacceptable...

Somehow having him back from the dead made hugging him the only acceptable thing to do in the entire world.

"Where have you been?!" she hissed into his ear as he went positively rigid at her sudden embrace. "The Order searched everywhere! They searched the country mile by mile, they really did!"

"I've been...here and...and there..."

"Why?! For the love of Merlin, why didn't you visit or...or write?! I mean..._Teddy_...!"

"It's alright, Ginny..." Teddy interrupted, only for Ginny to round abruptly on the two wizards in the doorway.

"Did you know about...about this?!" she demanded to know. "Did you know he was...he was alive?!"

"No." Teddy said, shaking his head, but beside him Harry shifted awkwardly and mumbled:

"I...had a hunch..."

"What?!" Ginny cried, eyes widening quite madly, and Harry winced and insisted:

"It wasn't my idea to keep it secret..."  
>"It was necessary." Remus put in, only to pause to cough violently. "It was...for the best..."<p>

"How in Merlin's name could it be for the best?!" Ginny exclaimed wildly, spinning round to look at him again, and her shock very nearly struck her all over again. "Best for who?! Certainly not you! Look at you..."

"Best for Teddy." Remus half-whispered as if the phrase took him some effort, and Ginny simply stared at him in disbelief, only for Harry to interject:

"It's not as simple as you think, Gin."

"You can be quiet!" Ginny snapped furiously, pointing an accusing finger in her husband's direction. "I'll bloody well get to you in a minute!"

"It's really not Harry's fault, I made him promise..." Remus began half-heartedly, only to squeeze his eyes shut when Ginny demanded:

"Don't defend him! You're both as bad as each other! How can the pair of you conspire to...to hide all this from...from the people who care about you?! How can you both let your friends, the people who...who love you believe such...such an awful lie?! How can you both let us...how can you let Teddy think his only surviving parent is _dead_?!"

"Let's not...let's not get into all that right now!" Harry suggested, reaching to shove the sodden face flannel and potion bottle into Teddy's hands, and with that he strode forward to tell his wife: "I'm sure we'll all sit down and have a proper talk about all this later. But right now Remus really needs to rest!"

As he reached to rest a hand upon her shoulder, Ginny narrowly avoided the urge to reach and push it off. Despite her fury, however, she sighed heavily and told Teddy:

"Pass that here, Teddy." As the young man shuffled forward to offer her the flannel and potion, the witch eyed the werewolf despairingly and wondered: "How long have you been like this? How long have you been ill?"

"I don't know..." Remus mumbled as she reached to uncork the bottle with a vague pop. "A while..."

"A while?" Ginny asked, reaching to push the bottle into his hand before setting about rearranging his blankets.

"A week. Perhaps."

"Merlin..." the witch muttered, hastily reaching to press the flannel to his forehead as if suddenly the action had tripled in urgency. "You should be in hospital, Remus!"

"Have you ever tried to get yourself admitted to hospital when you've been legally declared dead for almost a decade?" Remus wheezed, face contorting at the mere thought. "Dreadful business...the whole place would be in uproar, there would be Ministry officials snooping around and...and they'd contact a next of kin!"

"You're an idiot." Ginny informed him frankly, feeling quite strange for doing so because she would never dream of speaking to him in such a manner before. "You'd better drink all of that, all the good it'll do you! We need something much stronger!"

It felt better, she supposed, to have something to focus on. Something to chase away the faintness and the disbelief. She tucked the blankets so tightly around him that he could barely move a muscle before bustling out of the room, shooing the children downstairs and commanding Teddy to set up a cauldron in the kitchen. She went to the master bedroom to search for extra blankets, feeling an odd stab in her chest to hear Harry follow her.

"Ginny..." he began, voice already swimming in guilt, but as she wrenched open the wardrobe she told him:

"I don't want to talk to you. Not right now."

"He made me promise, Gin..."

"I don't want to know, Harry."

"He was...he still is in...in no decent frame of mind! He's...he's a complete wreck..."

"It doesn't matter!" Ginny snapped, spinning round to face him as she yanked a blanket off a shelf. "For Merlin's sake, Harry! Couldn't you trust us?! Couldn't you have just told us he was alive?! D'you think you couldn't trust us to keep our mouths shut and...and leave him alone if he wanted us to?! He would never have had to know!"

Harry looked rather stunned.

"Ginny," he said after a disbelieving pause. "Can you honestly..._honestly_ imagine that if your mother or...or Hermione or...or if _Andromeda _had known he was alive they'd have just sat back and...and let him go away like that?! Honestly?!"

"Yes!"

"I don't believe you."

"I...I don't care, Harry! It's...it's cruel! It's cruel to all of us!"

"We were trying to protect Teddy. It's complicated..."

"There's nothing complicated about a child needing his father, Harry! Absolutely nothing!"

Their voices were growing louder and Harry very nearly bit through his tongue when he exclaimed:  
>"He can't touch him, Gin! Remus can't touch Teddy, it burns him! Just like it burnt Tonks!"<p>

There was a long silence. Husband and wife seemed to be attempting to catch their breath as the grim truth hovered like smog in the air between them.

At last, Ginny muttered:

"No...!"

"It's true." Harry insisted bleakly. "I've seen it, Ginny, it's...it's awful! When he found Remus, Teddy...Teddy went straight up to him and...and touched him! And it burnt him! And...and he doesn't care, he's just like Tonks, Ginny! He doesn't care if it hurts he just...just wants his father, I can tell! I can see it on his face when he looks at him! And...and can't you see?! If Remus had stayed it would've been just the same! He'd have sucked the life out of that boy before he'd even gotten to Hogwarts! Because Teddy doesn't care! I...I thought the same as you before, I really did! Remus and I argued about it, I was...I was so angry with him! But now I've seen Teddy...now I've seen how...how determined he is...Remus had a point! It was safer, Ginny! Teddy was safer with Andromeda and...and with us as his family!"

Ginny dropped down to sit upon the edge of the bed, gaze upon her feet, her heart sinking in her chest when Harry told her:

"Family isn't all about blood, you know."

"Family isn't all about blood, you know." Tonks had said one wintery morning shortly after Christmas as she stood with Ginny upon the back steps of the Burrow, watching for the return of Alastor Moody from one grim mission or another. "In fact in the grand scheme of things blood has bugger all to do with it." The Auror had leant back against the door behind them, fingers tapping impatiently against the wood, before muttering: "You can all make me sick to the stomach with worry, you know. You Weasleys and the rest of the Order. Standing here like this..."

"If you were related to Mad-Eye, I wouldn't be surprised." Ginny had told her with an impressive air of innocence, and Tonks had glanced sideways and asked:

"Oh yeah? Why's that then?"

"Because the pair of you are both barking mad, Tonks!"

And Tonks had promptly grinned and reached to give the abruptly laughing girl a firm shove sideways, leaving her to narrowly avoid falling flat in a large puddle gathering beside the back steps.

There had been the distinct pop of apparation and the amusement was wiped from Tonks' face as she reached to draw her wand, arm raised and eyes darting around searchingly as she reached forward to drag Ginny back up the steps, pushing her towards the back door.

"You're about as bloody irritating as a blood relation too!" the metamorphmagus muttered as her gaze came to rest upon a figure stepping out from the long grass some distance away. "The similarities are uncanny! Now quick, get back inside until I'm sure that's really Great Uncle Alastor!"

And both Tonks and Harry were right, Ginny supposed when she returned to Lily's bedroom a few minutes later with the blankets. Perhaps Remus at least might be forgiven for his absence all these years. Because Teddy had had his grandmother for many years, and a father in Harry and a mother in her, they had always treated him like one of their own. And he _was _one of their own. Because blood had nothing to do with it.

"He's a good boy, isn't he?" Remus had murmured as she tucked the blankets tightly around him, and at her questioning glance, he'd added: "Teddy, I mean."

"He's grown into a very kind and very well-rounded young man." Ginny had agreed with a small smile, and had turned to head downstairs, instructing: "Now try and get some sleep..."

She'd been halted by his hand reaching to grasp hold of her arm, his grip surprisingly tight, and when she turned back to look down a him, Remus whispered:

"Thank you. For loving him."

And Ginny had shaken her head and told him:

"He's part of our family, Remus. And we all love Teddy. Even you."

She could tell from his eyes that, despite his desire to keep away that she was without a doubt correct.

Despite his loss and despite his pain, Remus loved his son.

And as she left the room a moment later, Ginny couldn't help but worry that this was only going to make the coming days infinitely worse...


End file.
